The Environment Exchange set to launch new service
Wednesday, 26 March 2008 12:49
The Environment Exchange is set to launch a marketplace for trading of WEEE Evidence Notes.
Announcing the development, Angus Macpherson, Managing Director of the Edinburgh-based Environment Exchange (t2e) said that the service will be open to Compliance Schemes, AATFs, AEs, and DCFs. Under the rules of the WEEE Regulations, WEEE Evidence or Trade notes must be issued to Compliance Schemes (possibly via their approved representatives), meaning that only these organisations can buy WEEE Evidence.
The sellers on this marketplace will be Compliance Schemes, who have surplus evidence notes to their producer obligation, and AATFs, AEs, or Local Authorities that operate DCFs, who have evidence of compliance, but who do not have agreements in place with Compliance Schemes to buy them. Initially, this marketplace will be solely focusing on the trading of evidence of the household (B2C) market in WEEE through the collective producer responsibility system. When members use t2e’s services, their rules, take precedence over their members terms and conditions, which ensures that a fair playing field is established for all.
The Environment Exchange offers 3 services: Transaction, Settlement and Information.
A bulletin board will be established outlining what evidence sellers have for sell (in each of the 13 categories), and at what price they are prepared to sell them. This board will be anonymous, to overcome any issues of unfair or preferential trading.
The Transaction Service will provide facilitation support between the buyer and the seller to ensure that a fair and final settlement price is agreed upon, and then the Environment Exchange will issue a contract, acting as the clearing house for the cash transaction.
The Settlement Service will manage the agreements between the buyers and sellers, obtain and hold payment, and then authorise the exchange, all of which must be completed with 5 days. As soon as the evidence has been issued, they will transfer the payment to the buyer 2 days later, eliminating the risk of slow or non payment.
The Information Service will aggregate all of the totals, split down into their various categories, providing up-to-date and historical information on total tonnages exchanges, the spot price, and the high and low prices. In the future, it is anticipated that a forward buying option may be develop, in line with current trading of Packing Waste Notes.
To begin with, the Environment Exchange will not be providing a service to AATF’s for the trading of their recovered material for recycling. This is because each AATF is operating at different material quality standards, so a set market price is difficult to ascertain.
Membership of the Environment Exchange has been initially set at £1,000 per organisation per annum. Transactions in the first compliance period will be free and within this fee AATFs and AEs can receive an independent audit for one of their sites.
The announcement of the new marketplace has been favourably received by local authorities that operate DCFs, who are currently unhappy about being forced to trade directly with one Compliance Scheme, when the regulations allow them to deal with treatment, recovery and recycling directly with local, known AATFs (and satisfy their own duty of care), and trade the evidence to a range of Compliance Schemes.
The Environment Exchange is an independent privately funded organisation, and must not be confused between the government controlled Settlement Centre. The Glasgow-based Settlement Centre’s primary function is to record evidence of WEEE treatment and to allow issuance and holdings of Evidence Notes to be monitored. It is not a market place.