On the 2 January 2007 the UK Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations came into force. WEEE is a new piece of producer responsibility legislation which aims to reduce the amount of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) ending up in landfill. Instead the regulations require the collection, treatment, recycling and environmentally sound disposal of WEEE. The regulations affect all brand owners, importers and distributors or retailers of EEE.

The WEEE regulations require producers of EEE to finance the recycling costs of EEE at its end-of-life. All obligated producers must register with a compliance scheme or risk prosecution.

Dell, B&Q, Draper tools, Cisco, Halfords, IBM, Kenwood, Zerox and others are all registered on the WEEE register