WEEE (EU Electronic Waste Directive)

WEEE — Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive — is European Union Directive 2012/19/EU establishing producer-responsibility obligations for the collection, recycling, and recovery of electrical and electronic equipment. It is the EU’s flagship circular-economy directive for electronics and a primary driver of design-for-disassembly and take-back programs.

Scope

WEEE applies to ten product categories ranging from large household appliances and IT/telecom equipment to medical devices and monitoring/control instruments. Producers placing equipment on the market must register, finance collection and treatment, meet category-level recovery and recycling targets, and label products with the crossed-out wheelie-bin symbol. PLM systems track WEEE category, weight, recycled-content, and disassembly information per part and product.

Relationships (see sidebar)

• Normative for the Part Master (weight and category attributes) and the Part Lifecycle Information data object (end-of-life data).
• Companion to RoHS and REACH in the EU compliance stack.

Steward

European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment.