REAV

Glossary

WEEE

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment

The EU directive that makes producers responsible for collecting and treating electrical and electronic equipment at end of life.

The WEEE Directive (2012/19/EU) sets collection, recovery and recycling targets for electrical and electronic equipment across the European Union, and places the cost of meeting them on the producers who put the equipment on the market.

For anyone handling used devices, WEEE decides two practical things: which category a device falls into, and what has to be recorded when it is treated. Treatment operators must report tonnages by category, and equipment leaving the waste stream for reuse must be documented as reused, not recycled.

That distinction matters commercially. A device prepared for reuse leaves the waste stream and keeps its value; the same device sent to recycling is counted as waste and returns only its material worth. Repair operations sit exactly on that line, which is why traceability per device, not per pallet, is what makes the difference provable.

Related terms

  • EPR The principle that makes producers financially and operationally responsible for their products once consumers are done with them.
  • AGEC law The French circular-economy law that introduced the repairability index, the durability index and a wave of new producer-responsibility obligations.
  • Reverse logistics The flow that moves goods backwards | from the user toward collection, inspection, repair, resale or recycling.
  • Refurbished vs. remanufactured Refurbishing restores a specific device to working, saleable condition; remanufacturing rebuilds units to an as-new specification, usually with interchangeable parts.

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