Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Amendment, etc.) Regulations 2025

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)]

My Lords, in heading off the ever-growing tide of waste which blights our planet, we must prioritise both responsibility and fairness. Those who create waste must rightly take responsibility for its safe treatment at the end of its life, and those costs should be shared fairly and borne by those who also make the profit.

As your Lordships know, we are facing a mounting waste crisis and electrical waste is no exception; in fact, it is the fastest-growing waste stream globally, and the UK is the second-biggest generator of electrical waste in the world. Many electricals, including those sold from the online retail and vaping industries, are ending up in our bins, littering our streets and, too often, harming our natural environment. This is not sustainable economically, environmentally or socially. We must reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill and, in doing so, we must ensure that those who benefit from selling electrical items pay fully and fairly for their treatment at end of life.

This legislation will address two key areas. I will start by addressing the issue of sales of electricals placed on the market via online marketplaces and overseas sellers who are not meeting their obligations. The sales of electricals from sellers based overseas via online marketplaces, such as eBay and Amazon, are skyrocketing, with over 0.5 million electricals being sold every year via these platforms. I am sure that many Members of this House have recently made just such a purchase. However, when UK businesses sell an electrical item, they incur an obligation to pay for its recycling at the end of its life, and most overseas sellers using these platforms are not meeting their financial obligations to do the same. This is wrong, not least because compliant UK-based businesses are picking up the costs for those free-riding under the existing regulations. We believe that this must stop.

I now turn my attention to the issue of vapes, e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and other similar products, which for convenience I will refer to simply as “vapes” for the rest of this debate. The Government have already banned the sale of single-use vapes—a vital first step in taking an environmentally harmful product off the market—but our work does not end here. Other types of rechargeable and refillable vapes continue to be sold, and we need to ensure that their collection and treatment is properly and fairly funded. Producers of electricals, including vapes, are already required to finance the cost of their treatment when they become waste. However, existing regulations mean that producers of other types of goods—toys and leisure equipment, for example—risk cross-subsidising the waste management costs of vapes. This cannot go on. Vapes are difficult and expensive to recycle, as they contain hazardous substances and can cause serious fires if not treated correctly.

Unfortunately, a friend of mine suffered from such a fire in a recent incident. He has a haulage company, and he was called in the early hours of the morning to be told that one of his lorries had caught fire. By the time that the fire service was able to put the fires out, he had lost nearly all his lorries. It was absolutely appalling, and it was all down to a consignment of vapes in one of the lorries. So this is a serious issue, for health and for business purposes, which we really need to address.

We believe that the responsibility for dealing with vapes when they become waste must fall squarely on the shoulders of those who produce them. This is why I am pleased and proud to introduce these regulations, which will hold those producers directly accountable for the environmental impact of the vapes and other similar products that they place on the UK market. This instrument is about fairness for UK businesses. It is about supporting them to do the right thing and ensuring that the right people are paying their fair share of the waste management costs associated with their products. In doing so, we send the clear message that environmental responsibility is not optional; it is part of doing business in a modern, circular economy.

Transitioning to a zero-waste economy is one of five priorities that Defra will deliver as part of a mission-led approach to government. Our circular economy strategy later this year will set out further plans to stem the rising tide of electronic waste. This Government are committed to putting the “polluter pays” principle into action. We are on the side of those businesses that behave responsibly to protect our planet, and we are rooting out those that are not doing their fair share. For those reasons, I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing these regulations, which I warmly welcome and support. In the case of her road haulier friend, I hope that he had good insurance and was able to recover the costs and get back on the road again. I have a couple of questions in order to understand more of the detail of how the regulations will work.

The Minister mentioned Amazon and eBay, but one that keeps bobbing up, although I have never actually used it, is Temu, which seems to be everywhere for everybody. I welcome what the Minister is proposing in respect of online marketplace operators, but my question is how it will work in connection with the electrical goods to which the regulations refer. When one makes a purchase—obviously, I have used one of the companies to which the Minister referred, which I do not want to advertise, as there are others available—at what stage will the regulations kick into effect? How will her department police the operations as smoothly as the regulations envisage?

Paragraph 5.5 of the Explanatory Memorandum clearly states:

“There are difficulties with enforcement of the 2013 Regulations against non-UK based suppliers”.


Obviously, one of the reasons that electrical goods are cheaper online is because the suppliers have not been paying for the costs of disposal. One question, therefore, is: will they now be more expensive as a result of the regulations, although people will be competing more fairly? It is no secret that the rise in online shopping has been one of the greatest challenges to traditional retailers up and down the country, including out-of-town shopping centres and market towns. I personally want to see market towns recover, although I know that there are a number of other issues, including parking. Paragraph 5.5 goes on to say:

“The intention of this SI is to ensure that OMP operators who facilitate these sales into the UK are responsible for those costs, ensuring the costs are distributed more fairly”.


Presumably, the reporting that the statutory instrument is making a requirement will ensure that such operators are in the system, so to speak.

The Minister has identified how flammable and how dangerous some of these items can be. My other question is: what is the normal disposal mechanism for, in particular, e-cigarettes, vapes, heated tobacco products and other similar items? In previous debates on statutory instruments in this very Room, we have discussed how important vaping is in getting people to switch from smoking and in the prevention of smoking in future, although there are obvious dangers where young people are vaping for the first time, which I know the Government are seeking to address.

It seems odd that, originally and currently, e-cigarettes, vapes and heated tobacco products fall within category 7 under the WEEE directive, which category also covers toys and leisure equipment. Will they be recategorised, so that vapes are taken out of that category? The Minister will not remember, but there was a toy safety directive when I was a Member of the European Parliament, and I was even a Member of the European Parliament when the WEEE directive appeared in its first incarnation. The toy safety directive covered such things as teddy bears’ eyes—if a child could eat them, they had to be carefully disposed of—and it impacted charity shops on the high street, which had to deal with them separately.

I should like to understand how these e-cigarettes, vapes and heated tobacco products will be disposed of and what the financial costs of the collection, treatment and recovery are estimated to be. Will the onus be on the user of these products to dispose of them safely and in a responsible manner?

With those few remarks, I wish the Minister well with the regulations, and I hope that they go on to make a positive impact.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I thank the Minister for her introduction. I have a few specific questions, particularly relating to online marketplaces.

We can probably all come up with a list of half a dozen large websites that we would expect to be selling these products, but I have a little awareness—possibly more than most Members of your Lordships House, but still not that great—of things such as Discord servers, which are not very visible or open to the public but require membership. A lot of selling, particularly to young people, may take place through these layers of the internet, which be at the top layer of the TikToks and eBays and so on. How will the Government ensure that we are not going to see the cheapest products ending up further and further down the chain of legibility to government and regulators. I would be interested in understanding a bit more about how the Government will enforce these regulations. How they will find the sellers and work out who owns them and who owns the websites? What level of enforcement is going to happen?

I take this opportunity to pay testimony to the work of Action on Smoking and Health. At an ASH event that I attended downstairs a week or so back, they had a disposable vape and a reusable vape, and the trick question was: which was which? They were indistinguishable. I also note recent reports that many shops that used to sell disposable vapes are now selling reusable ones, but the same shops do not sell refills. Such shops are just taking things called reusable vapes and still treating them as disposable vapes. If the Minister is unable to answer that now, I will understand if she wants to write to me. When we are talking about managing the waste problem, although there is a sense that we have dealt with the problem of single-use vapes because we have passed a law, I would question that. From what I have seen and has been said to me, how much have we changed the reality on the ground?

My other question comes from practical experience. Last week, I happened to be in the middle of Dudley town centre where I saw what is perhaps a measure of the socioeconomic usage of vaping. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred to the fact that vaping was supposed to be for people giving up cigarettes; the last statistic that I saw suggests that there are 1 million people in the UK who vape who have never smoked tobacco. In the middle of Dudley town centre, the borough council had provided a specific bin for the disposal of vapes.

My question to the Minister, therefore, follows on from the probably fairly modest extra revenue that these regulations will raise. How will we ensure that the funds raised actually go to the people incurring the costs? I am thinking of the financial impact on councils in particular—I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association—but also any other bodies that may be forced to deal with the disposal of what may or may not be single-use or reusable vapes.