Computer manufacturers in the UK will finally be responsible for the disposal of their products following a consultation process launched by the British government last week. The so-called WEEE laws are now drafted – but should have been in place by August 2004. That leaves Malta the EU laggard. Malta is the only EU country that has not yet transposed the WEEE laws.

“The delays were because a lot of the regulations were not clear enough,” said an environmental consultant. “The UK and Malta are the only two EU member States not to have transposed the Directive into law, but other people are having problems too. Many other countries missed the deadline last year when the laws should have come into force.”

The Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) was passed in 2003 and initial plans to pass it into UK law were scheduled to start in 2004. The Department of Trade and Industry now says that the Directive will be law on 1 July 2007.

One of the measures the environmental legislation will put in place is a Distributor Takeback Scheme, which will involve facilities across the country where people can drop off old equipment to be disposed of in an environmentally-sound way. The producers of the equipment will have to finance these.

“Electrical equipment is the fastest growing category of rubbish across the European Union, with around 20kg per person produced every year; the UK alone is now generating around 1m tonnes of the stuff every year,” said energy minister Malcolm Wicks.

The law will place a greater administrative burden on suppliers of equipment. They will have to register with waste schemes and track their products more closely in order to pay for their disposal.

The truth is that the familiar old telly is full of poisonous materials and it is classified as toxic waste.

The cathode ray tube contains several pounds of lead – a poisonous metal that damages children’s brains. Every year Britons throw away two million tubes when they trade up to a new generation model as flat-panels and high-definition TVs have become all the rage.

As prices have almost halved over the past year, the numbers sold have trebled. Indeed more than 350,000 were sold in Britain in the run-up to the World Cup.