WEEE Malta all set to join WEEE Forum

All formalities are now in place for WEEE Malta to join the WEEE FORUM as a fully accredited member as of October 2015. WEEE Malta membership will be formally sealed in October 2015 when the WEEE FORUM meets for its coming General Assembly.

The WEEE Forum –WEEE stands for ‘waste electrical and electronic equipment’–is a not-for-profit association of 32 WEEE producer responsibility 

organizations (or ‘producer compliance schemes’) in Europe. TheGeneral Assembly is expected to increase its members to 36 during the coming General Assembly when four formal applications from WEEE Schemes should be approved. It was founded in April 2002 preceding the entry into force of Directive 2002/96/EC on WEEE. The WEEE Forum provides a platform for producer responsibility organizations to take on the challenge of electrical and electronic waste in Europe by fostering ideas and sharing best practices whilst optimizing environmental performance through a proper management of WEEE.

The WEEE Forum is the largest organization of its kind in the world. Over the years, producer responsibility organizations of the WEEE Forum have acquired substantial know-how on the technical aspects of collection, logistics and processing of WEEE. In 2012, the members collectively reported collection of about 2 million tonnes of WEEE.

The 32 current Compliance Schemes members of the WEEE FORUM hail from 21countries in Europe and WEEE Malta is proud to note that our first collaboration locally relating to WEEE expertise was effectively with the former CEO of EL Kretsen, Mr Jurgen Shultz who has spend four weeks in Malta  a few years back when GRTU was effectively working on setting up a WEEE Compliance Scheme.  EL Kretsen is also a founder member of The WEEE FORUM established in 2002.

The mission of the WEEE FORUM is to:

• Deal with matters arising from European legislation concerning WEEE;
• Optimize the operational efficiency of the members while striving for continuous improvement of their environmental performance;
• Promote exchange of know-how and best practice;
• Develop standards and technical specifications to fulfill producer responsibility on behalf of producers;
• Strive towards harmonization of procedures in regard to members and associated members or other structures that assume responsibility of producers for the management of WEEE.

WEEE Malta has already met with a number of the WEEE Compliance Schemes who are members of the WEEE FORUM, amongst which Raecycle is one of the closest collaborators. The Italian WEEE Compliance Scheme is one of the largest in Italy and other then a Compliance Scheme operates WEEE treatment and final recycling facilities in Roma and Syracuse, Sicily. WEEE Malta has had a couple of meetings with Raecycle with a view to strengthening areas of collaboration where economies of scale are possible and in addition to ascertain producer members in Malta are effectively complying to the legislation and thus making sure that no paper exercises are in place. Raecycle currently receives and processes just under 50,000tons of WEEE annually.

The current president of the WEEE FORUM is Mr Philip Morton from REPIC UK.

WEEE Malta is an Authorized Compliance WEEE Scheme set up by The Malta Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises, GRTU. The Scheme has 380 founder producer members. The Scheme will be operated by WEEE (MALTA) Limited, specifically set up for this aim. It is A not for profit set up, with the aim of complying to the environmental legislation of its producer members with the best available technologies at the lowest of cost.