Treating, recycling and exporting WEEE

Treating WEEE – what you must do

If your business treats waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) you must:

have an environmental permit, a pollution prevention and control (PPC) permit, a waste management licence or an exemption
be an authorised treatment facility (ATF) or approved authorised treatment facility (AATF)
treat WEEE according to the guidance on best available treatment, recovery and recycling techniques (BATRRT).

You can apply for an exemption from environmental permitting in England and Wales or waste management licensing in Northern Ireland and Scotland if you:

repair or refurbish WEEE
store WEEE while it is waiting to be recovered elsewhere
crush waste discharge lamps.

In England and Wales, there are standard rules for WEEE treatment facilities.

Environment Agency: Standard rules for waste treatment facilities

You must comply with the terms of your permit, licence or exemption to control your impact on the environment and avoid prosecution.

WEEE approved authorised treatment facilities

WEEE authorised treatment facilities (ATFs) are licensed to reprocess WEEE, but they can’t issue evidence notes. Evidence notes can only be issued by approved authorised treatment facilities (AATF) on their behalf.

If you want to issue evidence of recycling, recovery and reuse of WEEE to a producer compliance scheme (PCS) you must apply to your environmental regulator to become an AATF.

Application forms are available from your environmental regulator.

Environment Agency: Treatment of waste electrical and electronic equipment

SEPA: WEEE forms

NIEA: WEEE treatment facilities

If you are an AATF you must provide quarterly reports to your environmental regulator showing the amount of WEEE you have:

received for treatment
treated at the site
sent to a different AATF for treatment
delivered to a reprocessor for recovery or recycling
sent for re-use of whole appliances
delivered to an approved exporter (AE) for treatment and recovery or recycling outside the UK.

You must also provide your environmental regulator with a report from an independent auditor confirming that the evidence notes you issued match up with the amount of WEEE you received for each approval period.

Recovering and recycling WEEE

If your business recovers or recycles WEEE (that is, you are a reprocessor) you must have an appropriate environmental permit, PPC permit, waste management licence or exemption from your environmental regulator.

Recycling is reprocessing waste materials in a production process for re-use.

Recovery includes a number of activities, such as:

incineration with energy recovery
recovery of metal and metal components
recovery of inorganic materials.

Collecting, sorting, treating and processing WEEE is not recycling. Evidence from AATFs covering these types of activities does not show that you have met the recovery and recycling requirements.

Meet targets for recovering and recycling WEEE

If you recover and recycle WEEE you must meet targets for the amount of the WEEE you recover and recycle. You must include evidence of this in your reports to your environmental regulator. The targets depend on the category of EEE recovered or recycled.

EEE Category	Amount recovered by the average weight of the equipment	Amount of components, materials and substances reused or recycled by the average weight of the equipment
1. Large Household appliances	80%	75%
2. Small household appliances	70%	50%
3. IT and telecommunications equipment	75%	65%
4. Consumer equipment (eg televisions)	75%	65%
5. Lighting equipment (Excluding gas exchange lamps	70%	50%
6. Electrical and electronic tools	70%	50%
7. Toys, leisure and sports equipment	70%	50%
9. Monitoring and control instruments	70%	50%
10. Automatic dispensers	80%	75%
Gas exchange lamps	-	80%

Exporting WEEE

You should export WEEE only if you are sure that it will be recovered or recycled safely in the receiving country.

If you are an approved exporter (AE) you can only produce and issue evidence notes to producer compliance schemes for exporting WEEE if it is to be reused as a whole appliance.

If you want to export WEEE for reuse, treatment or reprocessing you must ensure that you comply with legislation on the shipment of waste.

Import and export of waste

WEEE approved exporters

If you want to issue evidence of the export of WEEE for reuse overseas to a producer compliance scheme you must apply to your environmental regulator to become an approved exporter (AE).

Application forms are available from your environmental regulator.

Environment Agency: Exporting WEEE

SEPA: WEEE forms

NIEA: WEEE treatment facilities

If you are an AE you must submit quarterly returns to your environmental regulator similar to that submitted by an AATF.

WEEE Evidence

Producer compliance scheme operators can get evidence on behalf of their members that they have paid for the collection, treatment and reprocessing of WEEE by: