Local amenity sites dumping electrical goods and breaching the WEEE directive have cost Plymouth council £11742 in fines and legal costs. Plymouth Magistrates handed the fine to the council after they had been caught selling electrical waste to unauthorised recyclers.
In January 2009 the Environmental Agency visited a recycling firm in Plymouth after being tipped off. It found a large amount of electrical waste left in the open, which under the WEEE directive is not allowed. All waste has to be kept safe and sent to authorised treatment facilities.
Also the correct paper work needs to be completed to comply with the WEEE directive. When the EA asked to see the transfer notes from the amenity site, the site operator didn’t even know what one was!
The EA are also investigating the alleged illegal export of WEEE waste to Ghana.
This is a lesson for everyone to learn!
If doesn’t matter who you are, making sure you follow the correct procedures is imperative if you do not want to face a similar fine. Recycling of any WEEE product needs to be done properly to help the future of our planet and also to help our environment today. There is no excuse for this type of poor or no effort into following the correct procedures, as they have been put in place for a reason. Lets hope this blog is a lesson to those businesses that think they can get away with breaching the WEEE directive.