UK businesses are in the dark as key deadline passes

According to the results of a survey conducted by WStore, the UK’s leading online reseller of business and IT equipment, SMEs are still not ready to cope with waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) legislation, which passed another significant milestone this week.

A staggering 47% of respondents to the survey admitted they were unaware of the packaging regulations and had never heard of the WEEE legislation. Not surprisingly, 60% of respondents were not implementing policies or procedures to cater for the new regulations.

The deadline for producers of electrical and electronic equipment to join a disposal compliance scheme was 15 March. This deadline will have cost implications for any business that doesn’t plan the disposal of unwanted IT equipment. Many UK businesses have assumed they will not be adversely affected by the regulations, and are not aware they may be faced with the cost of disposal of old IT and electrical equipment.

Businesses will have to arrange, and pay, for their WEEE to be disposed of by an approved authorised treatment facility if the waste equipment was purchased before 13 August 2005, and is not being replaced with equivalent equipment. Similarly, businesses will have to pay for disposal if they can not trace the producer or their compliance scheme.

Stewart Hayward, WStore commercial director, said: “What these changes mean for anyone buying, or selling, IT equipment is that the costs of recovering and disposing of packaging materials and the equipment itself will be met by increased prices. Assuming that you don’t have to do anything, or the problem will be someone else’s responsibility simply isn’t good enough – as many smaller businesses may discover to their costs.”

Businesses will be able to negotiate their WEEE liabilities with their suppliers. Such agreements may form standard supply contracts in the future.