2022 Q1 WEEE Collected Data Published

The Environment Agency has published data revealing the tonnes of waste electricals which have been collected in Q1 of 2022 (Jan-Mar).

Compliance Schemes collected 119,870 of household WEEE between January and March 2022, which is down by 684 tonnes (0.6%) from the 120,554 tonnes collected during the same period last year. It has been suggested that the rate of collections have plateaued and the fact that the targets for the collection of WEEE has been missed for five consecutive years are equally raising concerns within the industry.

Despite this, at the moment we are somewhat on track and the data offers a glimpse of how schemes are progressing towards target. Categories 10 and 11 (automatic dispensers and display equipment) are currently the only two categories tracking to hit their target, however we are very early in the year, therefore the next set of data released in September will deliver a fuller picture. Nevertheless, at this stage the data does confirm there is still a lot of work to within this next quarter, to give the industry more confidence that annual targets will be hit.

Table 1.1 outlines the 2022 targets that were released by DEFRA (The department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) earlier in the year, with table 1.2 highlighting how we are currently tracking towards these targets.

You can read our full news story reviewing the confirmed targets here.

Table 1.1 - 2022 WEEE Collection Targets

Table 1.2 - 2022 Q1 WEEE Collected data

The fact the UK household WEEE recycling targets have not been hit for five years contributes to the need for a scrutiny of the current WEEE regulations. The forthcoming WEEE consultation which is expected later this year, will be a great opportunity to reconsider the most significant metrics of success for the current system.

If you have any questions about our current progress towards the targets, please contact us on weee@complydirect.com and we will be happy to help.