Companies should get registered with a compliance scheme as soon as possible if they are still an unregistered WEEE producer, said the Environment Agency.

“If they have missed the deadline and they are producers, our advice is get yourself in a scheme as soon as possible,” Adrian Harding, policy advisor for producer responsibility at the Environment Agency told EW. “That will be seen as better than leaving it altogether.”

The DTI published its advice on the implementation in the UK of the European WEEE Directive last month. It tells firms how they must manage their electrical waste by supporting recycling of products.

The legal deadline for producers of WEEE - equipment that will eventually become waste electronics - to have registered with a compliance scheme was last week on March 15.

“Technically, unregistered producers have committed an offence,” said Harding. “The message we want to get out is: leave it to next year and you risk getting prosecuted.”

The WEEE Directive definition of producer does not match with any nationally-collected metric, so official statistics are unavailable.

According to some compliance schemes, registration is far from 100 per cent. “65 per cent of SMEs in the UK have no idea what to do, or if they need to be signed up to a WEEE recycling scheme,” said compliance scheme WeeeCare last week. “Lack of understanding and awareness will cause companies... to miss the deadline for registration with a compliance scheme.”