International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

19.0 Producer Responsibility, WEEE - Ireland
19.1 Outline of Policy
The Directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE Directive) was
founded on the principle of "Producer Responsibility" and its general objectives are:
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� To prevent waste of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and to promote
the reuse, recycling and recovery of such wastes;
� To improve the environmental performance of all operators involved in the life
cycle of electrical and electronic equipment, e.g. producers, distributors and
consumers and in particular those operators directly involved in the treatment
of waste electrical and electronic equipment.
The WEEE Regulations transpose the WEEE Directive into Irish law; the WEEE
Regulations came into effect on 13 August 2005.
The WEEE Directive applies across ten categories of EEE. The following 10 categories
have been identified in the WEEE Directive as belonging to EEE:
� Large household appliances
� Small household appliances
� IT and telecommunications equipment
� Consumer equipment
� Lighting equipment
� Electrical and electronic tools
� Toys, leisure and sports equipment
� Medical devices
� Monitoring and control instruments
� Automatic dispensers
The WEEE Directive requires producers to be responsible for the financing of the
collection, treatment, recovery and environmentally sound disposal of WEEE from 13
August 2005. This means that final users of such household WEEE are entitled to
return their WEEE free of charge, either to retail outlets in instances where a
replacement item is purchased, or to other authorised collection points, including
local authority civic amenity sites.
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