Online marketplaces will be required to pay their fair share towards the cost of recycling waste electricals, in a new set of measures announced by the UK’s Circular Economy Minister Mary Creagh on 10 December.
The new rules are an attempt to level the playing field for UK retailers, who are already required to cover the costs of collecting and recycling items from toasters to vapes to hair curlers.
Ensuring large online retailers pay their fair share is fairer for UK businesses who already pay to cover the costs of recycling. It comes as the government delivers on its Plan for Change, and reflects a further step in the government’s mission to boost growth.
The government’s announcement said the changes will also help fund recycling services and kick-start the country on the road to a circular economy, which is a priority for the Government.
Before now, UK-based firms were shouldering the majority of costs around collection and processing of electronic waste and operating at a disadvantage. With 100,000 tonnes of household electricals binned every year, the changes will for the first time make sure the burden of these costs does not unduly fall on UK based retailers compared to their online rivals.
Waste electricals are difficult to recycle – and represent a huge drain on resources, when they are not collected separately. Valuable metals – such as copper – are thrown away, while electrical components and chemicals can pose a health and safety risk to the waste industry.
Circular Economy Minister Mary Creagh said the government was “creating a level playing field for all producers of electronics, to ensure fairness and fund the cost of the treatment of waste electricals.”
“As part of our Plan for Change, we are helping UK businesses compete and grow, and we continue to get more households recycling, cracking down on waste and ending the throwaway society.”
Alex Baldock, CEO at Currys, said: “Low value, low quality and unsustainable tech is piling up in landfills, and it’s good to see Government doing something to tackle that. We’ll continue to work with them to help ensure our industry performs its important role in helping protect our planet and be a force for good.
Scott Butler, Executive Director at Material Focus, said:
“We welcome the Government’s vital new reforms to the waste electrical regulations. FastTech items such as vapes, have swamped the UK market, with half a billion items bought in the past year alone. These small, cheap and too easily thrown away items contain valuable materials such as copper, gold, and lithium which are lost forever and could instead power our tech future.
“These changes to regulations will mean that online marketplaces, many of which are selling FastTech and other electricals, must take on their producer responsibilities and contribute their share of the costs of recycling them. Creating a separate category for vapes also means that those who have been profiting from the boom in their sales can be held responsible for providing public takeback, communications and most importantly pay for recycling them.”
Under the plans, online marketplaces will need to register with the Environment Agency and report data on UK sales of their overseas sellers. This data will be used to calculate the financial contribution the online marketplace will make towards the costs of collection and treatment of waste electricals that are collected by local authorities and returned to retailers. The cost of that annual registration will be subject to a consultation led by the Environment Agency.
A new category of electrical equipment for vapes will also be introduced to ensure that the costs of collecting and treating vapes fall fairly on those who produce them.
Material Focus found almost 5 million vapes are either littered or thrown away in general waste every week in the UK. Vapes are rarely designed with the end of life in mind and are difficult and time consuming to recycle, a cost that is not always being borne by those who produce them.
To further deliver on the plans, the UK Government has formed a Circular Economy Taskforce, comprising of members from industry, academia, and civil society across the UK. This is intended to lead on to the development of a Circular Economy Strategy for England, which will be published next year outlining how individual sectors can contribute to ambitions in this area.
Reacting to the news, Tom Ash, senior policy officer at Wildlife and Countryside Link, said that, when it comes to electrical waste, “it’s clear that recycling alone won’t cut it. We need to be increasing repair and reuse of these items, so they have a much longer lifespan. This would help build a system where fewer electricals are produced – meaning we’re extracting fewer materials from the earth in the first place, protecting the natural world and communities from damage and pollution.”
