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

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� The financial structures associated with the WEEE regulations also vary
according to country. Although producers are financially responsible for “at
least” the collection of household WEEE from collection-point onwards, this
leaves room for extended responsibility to draw upon municipalities,
distributors or producers to finance the remaining set-up and running costs of
the household WEEE collection systems. The producer is responsible for these
extended costs in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Spain, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania,
Latvia, and Sweden, with Germany and Denmark assigning these costs to the
municipality and Poland placing these costs on the distributor. Thus the
municipalities of Germany and Denmark appear to take a larger portion of the
overall responsibility for the delivery of WEEE policy than other MS;
� There are two key categories of household WEEE for which producers are
financially responsible: historical WEEE and new WEEE, with the former placed
on the market prior to, and the latter after, 13 th August 2005. Considering that
producers could not influence the design of products placed on the market
before the Directive came into force, producers are assigned collective
responsibility for historical WEEE, calculated according to their current market
share. For new WEEE, the producer must bear individual financial
responsibility and, since it cannot be assumed that all producers on the
market today will remain on the market when their products are collected as
WEEE, they must also provide a financial guarantee to ensure that these costs
do not fall on other producers in the future. In countries such as Finland,
Germany and the UK, financial responsibility for new WEEE is made through
contributing to a collective pot, with payments calculated according to their
current market share. This system usually provides sufficient financial
guarantee should the company cease trading. In countries such as Belgium
and the Netherlands, the producer pays specifically for the collection and
treatment of their own returned WEEE. In this instance, some form of financial
guarantee is required (such as recycling insurance or blocked bank accounts)
to account for the possibility that the company ceases trading in future; 427 and
� In all countries, the producer is financially responsible for B2B WEEE placed on
the market after 13 th August 2005. However, the producer may conclude
contracts with end-users which stipulate other financing methods for B2B
WEEE. Regarding historical B2B WEEE, the end-user is financially responsible
in Germany, France and the Netherlands. In all other countries in the EU, the
producer is financially responsible where any historical B2B is being
exchanged for new EEE products on a like-for-like basis; the end-user is only
financially responsible when they do not wish to replace the historical WEEE
with a new like-for-like product.
427 WEEE Forum, Guidance Document, [Accessed 8 th October 2008], available at http://www.weeeforum.org/doc/WEEE_Forum_Guidance_for_Compliance_En.pdf
International Review of Waste Policy: Annexes