surreywaste.info

Waste Electrical Equipment

This page explains the WEEE directive, and the household items that will be affected.

  • Many household electrical items are now beginning to be affected by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (known as the WEEE Directive for short).
  • This is a new piece of legislation that affects how you can dispose of all the electrical items in your home.
  • It is designed to encourage more recycling of electrical goods and ultimately may place the final responsibility of safe disposal upon the manufacturer.
  • Until the system to accompany this directive is in place, there are other alternatives to disposal of electrical goods rather than to landfill.

The aim of the forthcoming government legislation is to regulate the disposal of these items to ensure that they are safe and present no hazard to the environment. This legislation is not yet fully in force but if we develop good disposal habits now it will make life easier in the future.

If your electrical item still works perfectly then you may wish to donate it to charity or to a community centre rather than throw it away. If you suspect the item were faulty then we recommend that you donate it to a charity that has an electrician to test and repair the appliances before sale. Not all of them do and if you send faulty items to charities without testers, they will simply end up in the bin.

Other options for disposal are to take the electrical goods to one of the 15 Community Recycling Centres or use your local councils bulky collection service if you can not physically manage to get the item to the site.

Items covered by the new legislation include everything that uses mains electricity or has the capacity to do so, including battery powered items. Items like lamps, radios, hairdryers, cookers, electric toothbrushes, electric lawnmowers, TV´s, fridges, irons, microwaves are all included.

You can find out more about this directive from www.weeeman.org.

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