On the 13th April, members of the AFDEC organisation met in Stevenage to discuss and review progress with regard to the impending RoHS & WEEE legislation. Guest speakers were Leigh Holloway & Mark Shayler of ECO 3, (who provide focused guidance and support to improve business efficiency) and Alan Dukinfield of RID UK Ltd, (a recycling organisation).

The first discussion points related to the fact that the RoHS legislation still has to be ratified and that this is not likely until late summer, (though the implementation date has been confirmed as 1st July 2006) and that the WEEE directive will not now come into force until January 2006 at the earliest, (though affected products will need to be identified with the crossed out wheely bin symbol from August 13th 2005 onward).

Leigh and Mark then elaborated on the likely impact of the WEEE legislation as it currently stands and reminded those present that they will need to register with the DTi or an approved compliance scheme, (once approved contractors had been identified, this is being progressed at this time).

Following on from the ECO3 presentation, Alan then went on to explain how he sees the WEEE recycling system being applied in practice, though the final details will not be known until the legislation is passed.

Paul Knowles of Rapid Electronics then advised that there is a need for distributors and suppliers to mark either products, or at the least paperwork, to indicate whether items complied with the RoHS requirements, so that customers could see at the point of receipt the status of received products. He went on to say that Rapid is adding a denotation (RC) to product descriptions so that this will appear on product labels, delivery notes and invoices.