The distributor is the party who, at the end of the commercial chain, sells electrical and electronic equipment to the user: the Large-Scale Retail trade and the retailer in general.
Many distributors in the classic sense, for the purposes of Legislative Decree 151/2005, are considered "producers" in that someone falls under that definition if they place electronic equipment on the market for the first time and this is the case with distributors who import products from abroad that are then distributed to their sales points.
The D.lgs 151/2005 in article 3, letter n., gives the definition:
"distributor": party enrolled on the companies’ register of businesses as in Law no. 580 of December 29 1993, and its later modifications, who, in a commercial context, supplies electrical or electronic equipment to a user and fulfils the obligations in article 6, paragraph 1, letter b);
A series of obligations is allocated to distributors:
- withdraw the used electrical and/or electronic (WEEE) from the final holder at the time of the purchase of a new equivalent, one a one to one basis;
- make the “Visible Fee” (or WEEE Eco-contribution), visible in its sales outlets if the producer has chosen that option;
- manage the waste from its own sales points to facilitate the withdrawal and transport to the nearest dump or collection facility.
IMPORTANT: In the current state and until the publication of a necessary Decree of "administrative simplification" the obligations set out by D.Lgs. 151/2005 are not operative for Distributors: therefore, the final holder may be directed towards public structures for the correct disposal of WEEE.
The distributor is obliged to indicate to the user separately the price of the product and the cost – identical to that identified by the producer - for the management of historical WEEE.
In this way the final consumer can understand, in a transparent way, the recycling cost of the product that he is purchasing.
In the current state and until the publication of a necessary Decree of "administrative simplification" the obligations set out by the legislation, including that of withdrawal of an old item of equipment at the time of the purchase of a new one, are not operative for Distributors.
The final holder may therefore be directed towards public structures for the correct disposal of WEEE.
Also professional distributors who act as an intermediary between the commercial chain of the equipment sale and the producer of the equipment itself, operating as collector of withdrawn waste, in the wait for administrative simplifications for the transport and storage, must assess with extreme caution the opportunity of withdrawing waste products from third parties, given the possible penalties that can be applied administratively and criminally.