The high court in London has ruled that electronics manufacturers should not collect more electronics waste than they have produced.
In a decision reached on Friday, Mr Justice Wyn Williams found that plans by compliance schemes to collect more waste than they were responsible for and then sell the surplus to schemes that were under-quota broke UK regulations.
However, the Environment Agency, which is responsible for enforcing the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations, did not act illegally by failing to take action on the matter, the high court said.
The ruling could have an impact on the way electronics companies organise the collection of electronics waste in the UK.
Under the EU's WEEE Directive, manufacturers of electronics products are responsible for collecting and disposing of electronics waste, a responsibility they fulfil by funding the compliance schemes. The directive is incorporated into UK law in the form of the WEEE regulations.
Two of the UK's schemes, Electrolink Recycling and Werc, deliberately collected more waste than they were responsible for under their quotas, then sold "evidence notes" of that collection to Repic, a third scheme, according to the high court.
In its complaint, Repic argued that Electrolink and Werc broke the WEEE Regulations by this planned over-collection, and that the Environment Agency acted illegally by not taking action over the situation.
Repic said it was unable to collect its quota of electrical waste due to over-collection by its competitors, and was forced to pay "ransom prices" for the evidence notes to make up its quota.
The high court agreed that Electrolink and Werc had broken the regulations. It disagreed with Electrolink and Werc, which had argued that the regulations permitted their actions, partly on the basis that the rules contain no measure explicitly banning over-collection.
The court said its decision hinged on a provision of the regulations requiring a scheme to have "viable plans to collect an amount of WEEE that is equivalent to the amount of WEEE for which it will be responsible for financing under these regulations".
Williams said the use of the word "equivalent" was key. "In my judgement, the use of the word is intended to ensure that a producer compliance scheme has viable plans to collect no more and no less than is necessary to meet its obligation," he wrote in the decision.
The breach occurs only if a scheme deliberately plans to collect more than its share, which, in this case, Electrolink and Werc agreed that they had done.
If a scheme has plans to collect the correct amount, but then happens by miscalculation to collect more than its share, no breach has taken place, Williams said.
