As a retailer selling more than £100,000 worth of electrical goods and running a retail store or other establishment (including showrooms) in the UK, you must offer your own take-back of electrical goods from private households on a one-to-one, like-for-like basis. The authorities are increasingly enforcing this from this year.
UK retailers with a turnover of under £100,000, or if you sell your products online directly to private end users in the UK, then your current membership of this phase of the DTS (Distributor Take-back Scheme) will remain in place until the scheme ends on December 31, 2021.
Our inquiries about what options online retailers have to meet your take-back obligation after the DTS ends revealed that from January 2022, when the DTS ends, you could offer an online collection or postage return service to your customers and provide information about this service on your website. You could charge a fee for this to cover the cost of collection, or impose the cost of postage on the customer.
It seems that the reality is that very few customers turn to manufacturers to take back batteries and WEEE, opting for alternative solutions such as local government recycling centers to recycle batteries and WEEE.
However, the final word on the future of the DTS has not yet been spoken, so an extension is not entirely out of the question.
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact Ramona Brunner via international@take-e-way.de or +49/40/750687-117.
For more information on our international compliance services related to the placing on the market of electronic equipment, batteries/rechargeable batteries and packaged products or packaging, please click here: https://www.take-e-way.com/services/international-compliance/
