Christine,
There has also been some discussion about the WEEE
process for non-EU manufacturers on the lead-free list
run by IPC.
I agree with Rich Hughes when he says that the
INTENTION of WEEE was to make recycling a
responsibility of the producer, not the customer.
However, there are a lot of paths from the producer to
the customer that the WEEE directive did not address.
Probably the BEST thing for you to do would be to seek
some legal counsel from a lawyer who is familiar with
the legislation. Those of us here on the EMC-PSTC
list could probably make some educated GUESSES, but to
even do that we'd need information I doubt you want to
post on a public forum. (Such as what countries you
are selling into and your sales channels - you said
your sales force has no offices in Europe, but you
don't sell to consumers either? Are you selling to
distributors, or ??? )
On the IPC lead-free list, some people were saying
that for producers outside Europe, WEEE coverage is
the responsibility of whoever the importer is, whether
it is a customer or distributor or whoever. Some
countries apparently don't want to even talk to you if
you don't have an official in-country representative.
But other people were saying that non-European
countries can become part of the European WEEE process
if they want to, although you might have to chase
bureacrats for a while, as the legislation was not
really written with that situation in mind. There has
been talk of industry escrow accounts, but then there
is the question of how much should a company pay in
and should it be by market share, weight of material
shipped into Europe, sales revenue or something else
entirely?
To look at all the things you COULD do and pick out
the one that makes the most sense is something you'll
probably want legal help on, so again, I'd suggest you
contact a lawyer who has some experience or contacts
with European legislation & bureacracies.
-Camille Good
Portland, Oregon
--- richhug...@aol.com wrote:
>
> Chris,
>
> 1) The stated intention of the WEEE Directive was to
> foster PRODUCER
> responsibility, not CUSTOMER responsibility -
> although all parties obviously have
> their part to play in protecting the environment in
> which we live.
>
> 2) You may be familiar with the idea that EU
> Directives are EU-wide law
> applied more or less consistently across all Member
> States - you can throw that
> notion out of the window for the WEEE Directive.
> Each Member State must have
> its own national legislation to implement the
> Directive (that's what
> Directives 'direct' MSs to do) but here we have a
> Directive that is almost anti-free
> movement in its effect. This is due to the
> variation in national legislation
> and the associated ways each country has chosen to
> implement requirements
> for producer registration etc. To give you another
> idea of the different
> approach here, for every other Directive I am aware
> of 'placing on the market'
> means placing on the market (e.g. offering for
> sale) in any MS within the EU:
> not so with WEEED, 'put on the market' means put on
> that particular country's
> market, so if you ship across the boarder from
> Northern Ireland (part of the
> UK) to Southern Ireland (Eire) you take it off the
> UK market (since you will
> no longer be recycling in that country and so will
> not want to pay the
> recycling charge) but put it on to the Eire market
> (where you will now be recycling
> it and so are liable for that country's - probably
> different - recycling
> charge).
>
> 3) There are a couple of pan-European compliance
> schemes I am aware of (one
> for lamps and the European Recycling Platform that
> has some large domestic
> appliance and PC manufacturers as members): there
> may be more such schemes. I
> do not know if even these schemes will operate in
> all 25 Member States. At a
> quick glance, the URL that Samuel Lifshutz provided
> some information about
> prospective compliance schemes in the UK, but as I
> have said there is much
> variation here and few one-stop-shops for the whole
> of Europe. {And I say
> 'prospective compliane shemes' because the UK is
> late in implimenting the
> Directive, so we have no national law that would
> cause compliance schemes to come into
> existance yet - we're still at the planning ahead
> stage whereas some
> countries have had laws in place for some time).
>
> Simple this isn't.
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Hughes
>
>
>
> In a message dated 01/09/2005 18:03:00 GMT Standard
> Time,
> christine...@aol.com writes:
>
> Hi All,
>
> We design telecom equipment in the US, it is
> manufactured by our CM's in
> China, and we sell it into Euorope through our
> internal sales force which does
> not have offices in Europe. Since our products are
> not sold to consumers, do
> we have to worry about setting up a recycling
> program to meet the WEEE
> directive? Currently, we are labeling our products
> with the Wheelie Bin and
> providing verbiage in our manual stating we are WEEE
> compliant. We believe that our
> end users/customers in Europe would be responsible
> for any Recycling process
> /program.
>
> Are we getting this right or do we need to contract
> with an EU authorized
> agent to setup a collection / recycling program for
> our equipment.
>
> Chris
>
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