October 2023

EEE & Battery placed on the market data

The deadline for you to provide us with your Q3 2023 EEE and Battery placed on the market data is 21st October 2023.

Please ensure that once you have entered your EEE placed on the market data in the portal for each category, you then click “Totals” at the bottom of the screen before you click “Submit”.

If you have any questions please get in touch with Jack jstudholme@repic.c.uk or Janette janetteollerhead@repic.co.uk

 

H1 2023 EPR reporting

We are pleased to confirm that H1 2023 EPR reporting has completed for all REPIC packaging members that supplied us with validated packaging data and a valid Organisation ID by the deadline in the Regulations. Thank you to all our members who worked extremely hard to achieve this, particularly given the nuances of the Report Packaging Data (RPD) system and the relatively late requirement to provide additional company information that wasn’t clearly specified in the Regulations. Whilst we expect that some changes to the reporting of brands and trademarks may be required once we receive responses to questions that we have submitted to the regulator, we are comfortable that our first submission achieves the “as accurate as reasonably possible” requirement of the Regulations.

Making reporting easier in future

• Company Information
  We now have a prescriptive list of company information that we needed to report in your first return, and in subsequent returns under the Data Reporting SI. We will incorporate this into our standard company details template, that we will ask you to check and complete for each submission.
• Data Form
  Having successfully completed your first EPR return, you should understand which Data Tables you need to complete. When we send your next EPR Data Form, it will be a single sheet excel template, which you can more easily insert into your own data files and link to your source data. We will be providing comprehensive separate notes detailing the information required in each table.
• Approved Persons
  We can only accept data that has been signed by persons that have authority on RPD to submit data (“Approved Persons”). This differs from the current Regulations which allowed us to accept data from any Director or Company Secretary that is listed for your company on Companies House. If you only have one Approved Person, who cannot sign your data for any reason, it appears that you need to request that RPD deletes your company’s account and create a new one. Fortunately, this has not proven to be a timely process. To remove any potential risks to meeting your future reporting timescales, we strongly recommend that your Approved Person gives authority to other persons in your company to submit data. This will provide contingency to your business in the event of future personnel changes or other unforeseen events. The Approved Person can give authority to either another Director, or Company Secretary, or any other person that has an appropriate level of seniority or experience to submit packaging data.

You will be aware there has been considerable debate on the impact of vapes, particularly disposable ones, with the WEEE system being no exception to this. Material Focus estimates that up to 5 million disposable vapes are being thrown away each week and when they do arise in the WEEE system they are very costly to treat due to their composition. Vapes are currently reported in category 7 (Toys, Sports and Leisure), which means producers in this category, and potentially all producers in the Small Mixed WEEE categories 2 to 10, could unfairly bear the cost of this.

REPIC has taken a leading role, along with a number of members of the WEEE Schemes Forum (WSF), to secure Defra’s approval to modify the current Producer Compliance Scheme Balancing System (PBS), to allow vapes to be classed as a separate category and for producers of vapes to fund the cost of separately collecting and treating them. The PBS provides a free of charge collection and treatment solution to local authorities who cannot find a WEEE producer compliance scheme to work with, for either a whole site or particular WEEE stream(s), so whilst this will not cover all vape disposals this has the potential to cover the cost of vapes collected at local authority recycling centres. To ensure the allocation of cost can be made to vape producers the EA has issued a request to all PCSs to confirm the amount of vapes placed on the market by their scheme members in 2022. We are writing separately to all REPIC scheme members who placed EEE on the market in category 7 in 2022, requesting this information, and we thank you in advance for your participation.

A significant future source of waste vapes is likely to be retailers, who unless regarded as “large”, have a duty to accept them from end users on a like for like basis on the purchase of new ones – “large” retailers must accept them regardless of a new purchase. PCSs are required to accept WEEE from retailers for treatment, and with the wide variety of outlets selling vapes this could run into a significant number. The WSF is therefore also considering the establishment of a voluntary retailer PBS for vapes, where similarly, vape producers would fund the cost.

Ultimately, Defra has indicated they will consult on establishing vapes as a separate EEE category under the WEEE Regulations, although due to the delays in the publication of the consultation it seems unlikely this will be implemented until 2025 at the earliest. We will continue to provide updates on this important topic.

 

 

WEEE and Battery Regulations

Government has indicated that it still intends to consult on changes to the Batteries and WEEE Regulations before the end of 2023. We will update you as and when more information becomes available.

WEEE Compliance Fee Methodology for the 2023 Compliance Year

REPIC has again supported the JTA in their development of a WEEE Compliance Fee methodology for the 2023 compliance year. A compliance fee is an essential feature of an effectively functioning WEEE system, that whilst encouraging the collection and treatment of WEEE, provides a legitimate and alternative form of compliance in the event that insufficient WEEE is available to collect to meet targets and ensures that producers are not exposed to excessive costs for WEEE to which they do not have access.

We expect Defra to issue a consultation on all proposals received in October, and we will provide more information on how you can support the JTA’s proposal once it has been published.

Government has indicated that it still intends to consult on changes to the Batteries and WEEE Regulations before the end of 2023. We will update you as and when more information becomes available.

Distributor Take-Back Scheme

Under the WEEE Regulations, most distributors / retailers of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) are required to provide take-back of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE).

Distributors selling less than £100,000 of EEE per annum and all online-only distributors can currently join the Distributor Take-back Scheme (DTS) rather than provide take-back. The current phase of the DTS expires in December 2023, therefore proposals to extend the DTS beyond this date will need to be submitted to Defra shortly. We understand there is a proposal in development, which Defra is likely to consult upon, and we will provide more information in due course.