Selling electronic products in accordance with the law, in six easy steps: from customer enquiry to sales launch

Before the customer enquiry

Before companies turn to weee full-service, they should already know which of their products are covered by the ElektroG and the WEEE Directive. This requires the following steps:

• Carefully check your product range: Any company wanting to place electronic products on the market is required to register with the appropriate national registry. The WEEE Directive has been interpreted differently by different countries, meaning that some products are only covered by the national law in certain countries.
• During the registration process, the electrical and electronic equipment must be assigned to certain equipment categories. The decision tree can provide some guidance for Germany.

From customer enquiry to the WEEE number

Certain documents are required in order to carry out the registration process in the individual countries. The following six steps are necessary before a company can begin selling its products.

1. The company requests an offer from weee full-service. To do so, the company must send weee full-service details of its planned annual sales volume of the electronic products for each type of equipment and for each country.
2. Bitkom Compliance Solutions will draw up an individual offer (incl. contracts and appendices) based on the sales volume.
3. Awarding the contract: The company accepts the offer by signing the contracts and appendices and returning them, fully completed, to weee full-service.
4. Registration by Bitkom Compliance Solutions: Only when we have received all the information (such as tax identification number and operating manual) we can begin the registration process.
5. The national registries will process the registration applications and then issue a WEEE number. In the case of Germany’s Stiftung EAR, this can take up to 12 weeks.
6. Companies can begin selling their products in the respective country once they have received the WEEE number.