On 14 October we celebrated the second ever International E-Waste Day. This event was created last year to raise the global profile of e-waste (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment aka WEEE); encourage both citizens and businesses to dispose of their e-waste responsibly; and promote greater recovery of valuable materials.

The JTA submitted our bid for the 2019 Compliance Fee regime. This year we have the additional challenges of the rising costs for dealing with plastics contaminated with POPS (persistent organic pollutants) and much higher recovery targets. We also wanted to strengthen transparency and accountability for both the Compliance Fee and the monies held by the WEEE Fund and how they are spent. Defra has published the two Compliance Fee bids (ours and Valpak’s) and they are inviting comments until 11 November 2019.

The last round of applications for money from the WEEE Fund to spend on projects to improve the UK WEEE regime has now closed and the bids are being assessed.