Amendment regulations made to give online marketplace operators producer responsibilities under WEEE Regulations

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Amendment, etc.) Regulations 2025 have been made to amend the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2013 to incorporate online marketplace operators as ‘producers’ (to a certain extent and under certain circumstances) under those regulations.

This will impose obligations on online marketplace operators concerning the WEEE they supply, where these are foreign goods supplied to UK household consumers.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Amendment, etc.) Regulations 2025 come into force on 12th August 2025 and are available here.

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Amendment, etc.) Regulations 2025 amend a variety of provisions in the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2013, including those relating to ‘online marketplace operators’. These are operators of any website, application etc. that facilitates the sale of goods (such as EEEs) by others.

In particular, these amendment regulations expand the definition of ‘producer’ within the 2013 regulations to incorporate online marketplace operators as ‘producers’ in certain circumstances. These circumstances are, namely, where these marketplace operators supply EEE goods that come from foreign producers to household consumers in the UK. Where this is the case, these new regulations classify these online marketplace operators as ‘OMP producers’.

In these circumstances, OMP Producers will thus take on producer responsibilities under the 2013 WEEE regulations. Indeed, the amendment regulations introduce some obligations for OMP producers specifically. These include (amongst others):

• The requirement to record the amount of EEE they place on the market
• The requirement to submit a planned methodology for recording this data
• The requirement to register as an OMP producer

However, OMP producers will be exempt from many of the usual producer responsibilities, including EEE marking requirements (see regulations 22-24 of the 2013 WEEE regulations) and product design requirements (under regulation 74), amongst many others (see regulations 10-16 of the amendment regulations).

These amendment regulations also make transitional provisions- which set registration deadlines for OMPs for whom these regulations apply. These deadlines vary depending on whether OMPs are already previously registered members of a WEEE scheme, and can be found in regulation 27 of these amendment regulations.

Sources :

UK (SI) 2025/910 – The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Amendment, etc.) Regulations 2025, made 22nd July 2025