Thorlux Lighting WEEE Directive

The WEEE Directive comes into force on the 1st July 2007 and will place obligations upon users and producers to handle their electronic and electrical waste more carefully. Such waste will no longer simply be placed in landfill as targets have been set by the European Parliament for Member States to recover certain percentages of their waste via recycling facilities. The legislation is now passed in the UK and Statutory Instrument 3289 is published. The legislation is very different between B2C (Business to Consumer) and B2B (Business to Business) routes to market. For B2C, businesses are required to join or operate a “take back” scheme. For B2B, businesses can make their own arrangements as appropriate (3289,REGULATION 9). Thorlux only supply B2B. In order to regulate manufacturers and control their methods for compliance with legislation all businesses must have joined a Compliance Scheme by 15 th March 2007. We chose to join ElectroLink who are particularly

experienced in waste management and have rules which cater for businesses who deal only in the B2B sector. In order to limit the costs and risks which are passed onto our customers we have decided not to charge a “WEEE Levy” at the time of purchase of the luminaires. To expect our customers to pay at the time the luminaires are purchased perhaps as much as 30 years ahead of disposal, in our opinion, is neither fair nor practical. Our method, will embrace Regulation 9 – the alternative arrangement. It will allow two choices for our customers in the future when the luminaires eventually become waste:-

The customer can choose to appropriately dispose of the waste, via their chosen contractor for example, and may actually recover some cost in later years as commodities become more valuable.
The customer can choose to contact Thorlux to arrange for unwanted luminaires to be collected. We will then arrange for our “Compliance Scheme Operator” to take back the waste. We do however reserve the right to make a charge at that time as we did not charge at the time the luminaires were purchased.

We are committed to the environment and we are working hard to make our luminaires last even longer and use even less energy. It is our belief that we are currently market leading in this area. We would like to gather information about the amount of WEEE collected and recycled by our customers. We kindly request that when you dispose of WEEE you fill in a log which will keep some basic information for our records and will also be useful for Government analysis required by the legislation. It is very easy to do and will not take many minutes.

Thorlux are not responsible for lamps which will be the responsibility of the lamp manufacturer when the lamps become WEEE. Please contact the lamp brand manufacturer at the appropriate time for further information. It is likely that their own dedicated Compliance Scheme – Recolight (see www.recolight.com) will handle lamp waste.