Legislation - IT disposal - WEEE Directive

Hazardous Waste (Amendment) Regulation 2009

THE 2005 regulations require producers of hazardous waste to annually notify the Environment Agency the premises at which they produce hazardous waste.

Under the 2005 regulations certain premises were thought to represent a low environment risk and so warrant less frequent inspections. They were therefore excluded from the notification requirement if they produced less then 200kg of hazardous waste in any 12 month period.

From the 6th April the threshold has been raised and premises can now produce up to 500kgs of hazardous waste(eg.CRT monitors and batteries) on site annually before having to register for a premises code with the Environment Agency


WEEE Directive - June 2006

Adopted in the UK in 2007, the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive is an EU wide directive designed to make manufacturers and importers (the 'producer') responsible for the cost of disposal of redundant equipment. The Directive sets targets for recovery and recycling across ten categories of products, increasing over the first few years of implementation.

The Environment Act

Your company has a DUTY of CARE to take all reasonable measures to:-

• Prevent the unauthorised or harmful disposal of waste by another person.
• Prevent the escape of the waste from your or any other person`s control.
• Ensure the transfer of waste, is only to an authorised person or to a person for authorised transport purpose.

You must ensure the proper and safe disposal of waste even after you have passed it on to another party such as a waste contractor, scrap merchant, recycler, local council or skip hire company. The Duty of Care has no time limit, and extends until the waste has either been disposed of or fully recovered.

Data Protection Act 1998

The original Act of 1984 was updated to include specific provision for electronic data and set out eight principles of data protection. Of major note was the legal responsibility for Data Controllers within organisations to adhere to these principles that include the secure removal of all electronic data from equipment entering the public domain.

Other Legislation

There is a raft of other legislation that supports and compliments the key laws above. These include the restrictions on trans-border shipment of IT waste (dangerously many disposal agents illegally ship IT waste abroad without license to do so), the Batteries Directive and Landfill Directive which prohibit the type of material that can be land-filled and how material should be pre-treated and forthcoming legislation that will further restrict and limit how redundant IT can be disposed of.

For more information take a look at the following guides:
WEEE Directive