11 August 2005 The UK implementation of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive, which forces businesses to dispose of all electrical equipment including computers, monitors and printers responsibly, has been delayed until June 2006.

The UK government said in March that the infrastructure needed to successfully impose the controversial European directive was not in place, and moved the start date from August 2005 to January 2006. This week that date was moved on a further five months.

It was felt that insufficient provision for recycling electrical goods had been made for the directive to become law. A spokesperson for the Department of Trade and Industry told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: "We didn’t want to introduce the legislation without collection points up and running."

WEEE requires that within a year of its implementation, 65% of the weight of any piece of IT equipment must be reused or recycled. According to Gartner analysts, this will make both the process of disposing of all equipment and the equipment itself more expensive.

But the biggest impact of WEEE will be for manufacturers. In January 2005, analyst firm AMR Research warned that manufacturers face additional costs to fund the return of products.