On January 19, 2012, the European Parliament voted to pass the amendment to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive). The European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers of the European Union reached an informal tripartite negotiation agreement on the new provisions of the directive amendment on December 20, 2011. After the revised directive is formally adopted by the Council, it will take effect on the day it is published in the EU's Official Journal and must be implemented in member states 18 months later. However, the transition period for some provisions will be longer. The revised directive contains the following main provisions: Scope: The revised WEEE directive covers all types of electrical and electronic equipment. Six years after the revised directive comes into effect, all electrical and electronic equipment must be classified into the six categories listed in Annex III (see Table 1 for details), except for items (a) to (g) below. During the six-year transition period (the classification principle is roughly the same as that of the pre-amended directive classification (10 categories, see Table 2 for details). Table 1. WEEE Amended Directive Specification EEE Category Category Category Annex 3 EEE Classification Category List 1 Temperature Equipment Refrigerators, Freezers, Air conditioning equipment, dehumidification equipment... 2 Screens, monitors and equipment with screens larger than 100 cm2, TVs, LCD photo frames, monitors, laptops... 3 Lighting equipment linear fluorescent tubes, small fluorescent tubes, fluorescent tubes Lamp tubes, low-pressure sodium lamp tubes, LED... 4 large equipment (any external dimension is greater than 50cm) washing machines, dishwashers, electric stoves, audio equipment, processing equipment for weaving, large
