ENVIRON Assists Electronics Companies to Comply with WEEE Regulations in France

Manufacturers and importers of electrical and electronic products in France must register with the Environment Agency ADEME by 30 November 2006. The WEEE registration process began on 1 September and further information is available at www.b2bweee.com/fr. Failure to register can prevent products being sold in France.

Manufacturers and importers supplying to businesses (B2B) are required to provide arrangements for collection and recycling of new products put on the market in France after August 2005 when they become waste. Reports on the quantities put on the market, collected and recycled in 2006 must be submitted to ADEME by 28 February 2007.    

Similar to the situation in Germany, providing compliant WEEE collection and recycling arrangements in France is considerably easier for business products compared to household products.A financial guarantee is not required and an individual system for business products does not require approval. Companies can further reduce their compliance costs by inserting a clause into sales terms and conditions which requires the last user of the product to pay to send it to the company’s appointed recycler.   

ENVIRON’s web systems for WEEE compliance provide a single system for managing producer registration, in-country recycling, and compliance reporting in all Member States. The service also includes consultancy advice on all aspects of the WEEE Directive, including assessment of legal responsibilities for WEEE compliance in different MemberStates, recycling instructions, and product marking.

Importers are required to register as the WEEE producer because they put products on the market for the first time in EU Member States. In France, for example, registration as a WEEE producer is only possible if you have a company registration number (SIREN) in France. This is creating a growing issue for foreign manufacturers whose products may be imported and sold by several distributors in each MemberState. The overall cost and administration for each distributor to register as a WEEE producer and to provide WEEE collection and recycling arrangements can be disproportionately high.

Foreign manufacturers can lessen the burden on their distributors in France and other MemberStates by providing WEEE collection, recycling and reporting arrangements on their behalf. Several manufacturers based in the US, Canada, Israel and Norway have used ENVIRON’s WEEE web systems to take advantage of this opportunity. 

In the past few months, several Member States have decided to change their procedures to allow foreign manufacturers to take over all of the WEEE obligations on behalf of their distributors. UK, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands and Portugal all now allow foreign manufacturers who do not have a local business address to register as the WEEE producer. 

Further information on ENVIRON’s web systems for WEEE compliance is available at www.b2bweee.com

For more information, please contact: Dr Aidan Turnbull, Head of WEEE, RoHS and Eco-Design, ENVIRON.  

Tel: +44 (0)1249 700104  e-mail: aturnbull@uk.environcorp.com

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