Do you know of the WEE directive?

Question

It's the crossed out wheelie bin symbol on all your electronic goods.

It states that you MUST return those items (at the end of their life) - back to the store you bought them at.

This is an international effort to recycle electronic goods.

I took back a DVD player back to Asda (Walmart) yesterday.

I handed it in - Guess what ? They had never heard of it - nobody had. Was I the first?

I tried a catalog company online. They didn't know what to do either - and got very defensive about exactly what I was returning??

Has anyone else tried this? - Returning goods for disposal?

Answer 1

Hi Mr P

The crossed out wheelie bin symbol means you should send the item for recycling at the end of its useful life. It doesn't necessarily imply that this means taking it back to the store you got it from although many big electrical retailers are offering that (albeit with unsatisfactory publicity to actually tell you that). Retailers of EEE (electrical and electronic equipment) basically have two choices under the WEEE regs. They can either offer in store take back (as you tried) OR they pay money into a DTS (distributor takeback scheme) usually run by a local authority. In short, if you have any WEEE, i.e. any item with the crossed out wheelie bin symbol, the easiest option is to take it to your nearest suitable local authority household recycling centre.

See recyclemore.co.uk for a recycling bank locator.

Hope this is useful

MS

Answer 2

i googled weee directive & it appears that it is not in u.s. only in Norway, Holland, Italy, Switzerland (not an EU Country). The Swedish and Belgian.