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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take steps to support the (a) re-use, (b) repair and (c) re-manufacturing of electronic waste products according to the waste hierarchy; and if he will make an assessment of the effectiveness of recycling infrastructure in supporting the management of e-waste.

The Waste Prevention Programme for England: Maximising Resources, Minimising Waste (MRMW), commits the government to prioritise measures to support the waste hierarchy in relation to electrical equipment. This includes consideration of ways to provide consumers and businesses with information on the environmental performance of electrical and electronic products, focussing on material resource efficiency aspects such as durability, reparability and recyclability. The government has also introduced new eco-design requirements for a range of industrial appliances, white goods, electronic displays and lighting products, to increase their reparability. We have also published a consultation and call for evidence on potential reforms to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations 2013. The review includes measures to ensure more WEEE is properly collected for reuse and recycling, considers new metrics to evaluate the performance of the WEEE system and wider proposals that would support the circular economy. We are currently analysing the responses to this consultation and call for evidence and will publish a summary in due course.