Recycling Electrical Equipment

The UK Waste Electrical and Electronics Equipment (referred hereafter as WEEE) regulations came in to effect on the 2nd January 2007. The regulation requires the collection, treatment, recycling and environmentally sound disposal of WEEE to reduce the amount of it ending up in landfill. The WEEE directive affects all brand owners, importers, distributors and retailers (that's us!).

WEEE is one of the fastest growing types of waste. To show some figures, each year in the UK we throw away over 1.2 million tonnes of electronic and electrical waste, equivalent to 150,000 double decker buses! This is increasing by around 5% each year. Over 75% of waste electrical goods end up in landfill where lead and other toxins contained in them can cause soil and water contamination. (Facts taken from recycle-more.co.uk)

To jog the memory of consumers for the collection methods available (which in turn allow recycling to take place), all electrical items sold now carry the 'crossed out wheeled bin' symbol on their packaging. This shows that the vast majority of WEEE can be recycled and recovered to make new products.

As a retailer to comply with these regulations and more importantly to do our bit for the environment we offer you (the consumer) a take-back service. This means if you purchase any new EEE product you are entitled to send the equivalent older item back to us and we will take the full responsibility for the costs involved to recycle that item. The service we provide is only on a like-for-like basis, so for example if you were to purchase an RC Helicopter we can only take back your old RC Helicopter. We would not expect you to send back a washing machine as this would not be a like-for-like exchange!

If you wish to return the WEEE to us please do so within 28 days of the sale date. Before doing so please drop us an email stating the item you are sending back, we will then reply to your email to give you the go ahead.

If you prefer to recycle the items yourself you may visit your local recycle centre, to locate one near you please visit recycle-more.co.uk.

Having stated the above we meet the obligations under regulation 33 to make information available to users of EEE in private households on:

(a) the requirement on each member State under Article 2 of the Directive to minimise the disposal of WEEE as unsorted municipal waste and to achieve a high level of collection of WEEE for treatment, recovery and environmentally sound disposal;

(b) the collection and take back systems available to them;

(c) their role in contributing to the reuse, recycling and other forms of recovery of WEEE under these Regulations.

(d) the potential effects on the environment and human health as a result of the presence of hazardous substances in EEE; and

(e) the meaning of the crossed out wheeled bin symbol.