WEEE rise in council tax

Consumers could end up footing part of the bill so local authorities can upgrade amenity sites to cope with waste electrical and electronic equipment.

This warning from the Local Government Association (LGA) comes as local councils get ready to comply with the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive which comes into force on 1 July.

The UK is already two years behind in complying with this environmental directive aimed at reducing the amount of waste electrical goods going to landfill.

The law forces producers of such equipment to recycle or dispose of it in an environmentally responsible way. However, the cost of disposal should not be passed on to consumers.

In order for this to happen, retailers either have to pick up the goods free of charge or sign up to the Distributor Takeback Scheme (DTS). Retailers who have joined this compliance scheme have paid into a pot to fund adaptations to council recycling centres to prepare for the extra volume of waste.

This involves a one-off payment to councils of around £6,500 per site, although some councils may be given an additional payment of up to £2,500. But to get the extra funding, they have to make a case to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

Councils are concerned that the pot is not big enough and are also worried that no provisions have been made to pay for the annual operational costs of running larger sites, estimated at around £9m every year.

"The one-off payments, even if a council can make a case for the additional payment does not cater for future expansion and the growing mountain of WEEE in the future," a representative for the LGA told Computeractive.

HP which is both a producer and retailer has paid into the DTS. It said the funds should be sufficient to cover upgrades to civil amenity sites both now and in the future a representative said it and other retailers would always work with local councils and government to ensure future WEEE waste could be dealt with.

However, currently more than a million tonnes of electrical items will have to be collected every year - the weight of around 2,500 jumbo jets. Of this, an estimated five million TVs, two million home computers and 8,000 tonnes of battery-operated or electrical toys are thrown away each year.

This tonnage is expected to grow and if the funds are not there to help councils upgrade, the LGA said the result could be councils refusing to take waste electrical goods or shifting part of the burden onto the public by having to raise council tax.