Which obligations do producers of electrical and electronic equipment have?

Apply for your WEEE-registration

Before you can sell electrical and electronic equipment in Germany, you have to be registered as a producer at the authority stiftung ear. This registration begins with setting up a user account and submitting an application for registration in the ear-Portal.

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Appoint an authorised representative if you are a foreign producer

If you have to be registered as a foreign company because you would like to place equipment on the market in Germany, then you need to have a so-called authorised representative to do so. They apply for the required registration in your name and take on your obligations in Germany.

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Obligations for all producers

Once you are registered you have different tasks that partially depend on the types of equipment you are registered for. You can see below what these tasks are.

Submit your annual statistics report

Every February you are requested to submit an annual report for the respective last year (report year). You deal with this task – as all other tasks – in the ear-Portal. You have time until the end of April to do so.

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Keep your data up-to-date

To make sure that we can reach you at all times, please make sure you up-date your company details in the ear-Portal regularly. But please note: You cannot change your company name yourself. If your company name, the legal form of your company, or other company law changes occur, notify us of these in the ear-Portal under the tab Company Details. Upload significant documents (contracts, historic trade register excerpts). Stiftung ear will then check whether it is possible to take over the registration and therefore also the registration number. Please take note that fees can be charged for this check. If an alteration is possible the company details will be changed by stiftung ear. Apart from that you might have to apply for a new registration. The sooner you inform stiftung ear of upcoming company law changes, the more time you will have to apply for a new registration if this should be required.

Handling in the ear-Portal

Mark your equipment

Mark electrical and electronic equipment that you place on the European Market in such a way in advance that you can be clearly identified as the producer and mark it permanently with the symbol of the crossed out wheeled bin. A date marked underneath this symbol states from when the electrical and electronic equipment was placed on the market. It is possible to attach a solid bar instead.

The Federal Environment Agency provides the symbol to mark products that do not belong in household waste as a PNG file.

Access to the page of the Federal Environment Agency

If you yourself as a producer take back waste equipment, you have to mark your collection sites with a special collection site logo. You can download the logo here.

Collection site logo

The other obligations differ, depending on whether you place equipment on the market that can be used at least also in private households (b2c equipment), or, whether the equipment is exclusively used in commercial environments (b2b equipment).

Always keep your guarantee up-to-date

If you are registered for equipment that can be used in private households you have to prove you have an insolvency safe guarantee when you register. This guarantee has to be calculated in such a way, also in the further process, as always sufficient for the equipment to be placed on the market in one calendar year.

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Pick up waste equipment from the municipalities

Electrical and electronic waste equipment from private households is generally returned to the municipalities’ recycling sites by the consumers. But the state sector is not responsible for disposal, the producers of the equipment are. If a collection container is full at a recycling site, stiftung ear investigates which registered producer / authorised representative is responsible for picking up and exchanging the container.
Relevant factors are the amounts of equipment that the individual producers place on the market. Once you have picked up equipment you report the amounts of equipment to stiftung ear in the ear-Portal.

Inform your customers

You have to inform your customers in writing of:

the obligation to dispose of waste equipment separate from household waste and that they must remove loose batteries, or rechargable batteries respectively, as well as lamps, beforehand and dispose of them separately.
the traders’ take-back obligation
the return options for waste equipment that you created
the end users’ own responsibility regarding deleting person-related details on the waste equipment that is to be disposed of
the meaning of the crossed out wheeled bin
the fulfillment of the recycling and separately collected ratio, whereby an appropriate note on the publication of the Federal Agency for the Environment, Environmental Protection, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection is sufficient.

Take back waste equipment

If you produce electrical and electronic equipment which is not used in private households you are obligated to take this equipmant back if it becomes waste.

Informieren Sie Ihre Kunden

As producer of b2b equipment please inform your customers about:

the obligation to dispose of waste equipment separate from household waste
the created reasonable option of taking back and dispose the waste equipment
the end users’ own responsibility regarding deleting person-related details on the waste equipment that is to be disposed of
the meaning of the crossed out wheeled bin