Legislation stipulates that every company that ‘brings an electro-appliance onto the Belgian market’ must also take care of the collection and processing of the discarded appliances.

Therefore, you can take your discarded appliance back to the shop/merchant where you are buying a new similar appliance. In this case, the shopkeeper is ‘obliged to accept the discarded appliances that customers bring back’.

The collection and processing of WEEE concerns everyone. The legislation contains various tasks for the consumer, the end-seller, the middleman and the manufacturer or importer of electro-appliances.

This means that manufacturers and importers of electro-appliances are responsible for taking-back and processing the appliances discarded by consumers.

They can choose from two options: either affiliate with the Recupel collection system, which takes care of all the tasks in the framework of the regional environmental legislation, or set up an individual waste management plan, which must be approved by the monitoring regional authorities.

When a customer brings back a discarded appliance with an all-in contribution and buys a new, similar appliance, the distributor or merchant is obliged to accept that old appliance free of charge. In addition, he must inform customers about the processing of WEEE and about the contributions that apply.

The end-users (at home or at work) are also an important link in the chain. By discarding electro-appliances correctly, they help recycle for a more beautiful world.