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The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE directive)
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The European Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive aims to reduce the amount of waste from electrical products being produced and encourages everyone to reuse, recycle and recover discarded products and their materials.
The WEEE Directive covers all electrical and electronic equipment with voltages up to 1,000 AC and 1,500 DC. Manufacturers and producers will be responsible for marking all the products they put onto the UK market as being WEEE compliant and for these purposes a crossed out wheeled bin has been adopted as the symbol of the directive.
RISCO Group's WEEE Registration Number is WEE/HF0053TQ
Comments from DHL regarding RISCO Group's compliance (July 2010) | |
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The Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS directive)
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RISCO Group is committed to operating business in an environmentally friendly manner and we are taking the necessary steps to fulfil requirements of Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS).
The Government is planning to make the Directive UK law and all manufacturers will have to be RoHS compliant from 1st July 2006. From this date, the RoHS Directive will ban the placing on the EU market of new electrical and electronic equipment containing more than agreed levels of certain toxic substances including: Lead / cadmium / mercury / hexavalent chromium / polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) flame retardants and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants.
RISCO Group products are declared as Lead Free and meeting the RoHS requirements | |
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Waste Battery Regulations 2009 |
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| The new regulations regarding waste batteries come into force on 15th October 2009
In the security industry batteries generally fall into two categories:
- 'Portable Batteries' - AA, AAA, C, D, PP3 etc. (Alkaline, Lithium, Nickel Metal Hydride)
- 'Industrial Batteries' - (Lead Acid)
What are RISCO Group UK's obligations / services?
Portable Batteries
As a 'Producer' of portable batteries we are required to participate in an authorised Waste Battery Compliance Scheme, accept back waste batteries and to contribute to the re-cycling costs.
Customers are welcome to return to our trade counter any waste portable batteries which we will pass on to our re-cycling agent.
Industrial Batteries (Lead Acid)
Recycling responsibilities lie with the battery producer, whom are required to take back any waste batteries from the end user.
RISCO UK do not have any formal obligations, however, we do intend to maintain our existing service of taking back any lead acid batteries which customers return to our trade counters. We will pass these on to our recycling agent.
Transport
Spent batteries are classified as hazardous waste. Any carrier or haulier who collects them is required to be registered with the Environment Agency as a specialised/approved handler of hazardous waste.
Each collection will incur a comparatively high premium and in addition, charges would be made for an environmental consignment note and an environmental fee.
In summary, the transport costs would be many times more than the original cost of the battery.
These costs would be the responsibility of the end user.
Our recommendation is that engineers/end users dispose of waste batteries at a local authority recycling centre, most of which now have battery bins.
Local recycling centres can be found at www.recyclenow.com
Also, a list of commercial recyclers can be found at www.wastedirectory.org.uk
The standard parcel carriers used by RISCO to deliver goods to our customers are not licensed to carry hazardous waste. We can only accept waste batteries deposited in person at one of our trade counters, or returned using an Environment Agency approved handler.
Battery Producer Registration Number
As a supplier/producer of batteries we are provided with a Battery Producer Registration Number BPRN00355 which is unique to our business.
RISCO Group is continuously striving to reduce the environmental impact of its operation. You will have noticed that we use plastic 'air cushions' to protect our products in our deliveries to you. A few customers have queried if it would be more environmentally friendly to use cardboard or paper based packaging as 'void fill'.
We raised the question with our packaging supplier and received a positive response that we would like to pass on to you. Please click here to read more.
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