Issued by: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs

Online marketplaces and vape producers to pay for recycling and cleaning up household of electrical waste.

Online marketplaces and vape producers will soon be paying their fair share towards the cost of recycling waste electricals, from toasters to vapes and hair curlers, levelling the playing field for UK retailers, Circular Economy Minister Mary Creagh has announced.

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 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 chucked away needlessly, while electrical components and chemicals can pose a health and safety risk to the waste industry.

In conjunction with this government’s wider actions to tackle waste and end the throwaway society, today’s announcement will help to ensure that businesses take responsibility for the huge quantities of waste that might otherwise end up being littered or fly-tipped, and support our efforts to protect the environment.

Circular Economy Minister Mary Creagh said:

"Electrical equipment like vapes are being sold in the UK by producers who are failing to pay their fair share when recycling and reusing of dealing with old or broken items.

"Today we’re ending this: 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:

"We believe that if you sell something, this comes with a commitment to help keep it working, and then to recycle it responsibly when it reaches the end of its life. We continue to do everything we can to give tech a longer life, but there are many who don’t.

"We welcome the Government’s new measures to help level the playing field for responsibility for waste, making online marketplaces do their part. 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."

Research from Material Focus estimates that British households incorrectly throw away over 100,000 tonnes of smaller household electrical items, such as kettles and lamps, every year. In addition, an estimated 880 million unwanted items containing valuable commodities such as gold and platinum, are abandoned or ignored in the back of the UK’s cupboards and drawers.

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.

Acting on these important issues now will help address unfairness and deliver on our commitment to kick-start the push towards a circular economy.

Government action to end the throwaway society

To further deliver this, the UK Government has formed a Circular Economy Taskforce, comprising of members from industry, academia, and civil society across the UK. They will lead on 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.

This is alongside plans to move forward with the implementation of the deposit return scheme for drinks containers and extended producer responsibility for packaging (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/extended-producer-responsibility-for-packaging-who-is-affected-and-what-to-do) that will end the nation’s throwaway culture and stop the avalanche of rubbish that is filling up our high streets, countryside, and oceans.

These packaging reforms will collectively support 21,000 jobs, stimulate more than £10 billion investment in recycling capability during the next decade, and drive £1 billion worth of investment opportunities in plastics infrastructure.

Discussions between the UK Government and devolved governments on other proposals from the consultation will continue. Plans for wider reforms that reflect their strategic priorities in the drive towards a circular economy across the UK will be set out next year.

The formal consultation response can be accessed online here: (https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/electrical-waste-reforming-the-producer-responsibility-system)

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