Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what new incentives is he considering to stimulate the recycling of electronic and electrical waste.

The current 2013 Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations are based on producer responsibility requiring producers to pay for the environmentally sound collection, treatment and recycling of electronic products when they become waste. The WEEE Regulations have contributed to high levels of collection, treatment and recycling of electrical waste since 2014. Last year, producers financed the collection of 493,323 tonnes of household WEEE.

The Government’s Resources and Waste Strategy sets out that we will consult on changing the WEEE producer responsibility regime by the end of 2020 as part of the strategy to increase resource efficiency and the adoption of circular economy principles. Measures to stimulate recycling of electrical and electronic equipment will consider how to reward producers for designing and selling more resource efficient products or services.