Effective January 1, 2025, all CESA (Canadian Electrical Stewardship Association) operations will be managed by the Electronic Products Recycling Association (EPRA) in British Columbia. Please note that collection sites may experience changes in signage, collection processes, and other minor updates to improve your recycling experience.
It may still make sense for you to report on and remit fees, even if you are not a legally obligated party. Here are 3 scenarios:
Customer service scenario
Your business does not have a presence in the region where the Regulation applies, but there is a network of local retailers that sells your product in that region. Technically, each individual retailer in that network is a legally obligated party and should report on and remit fees for your product. After all, they are the first importer of your product into the regulated market. However, for many of these individual retailers, reporting and remitting fees is a cumbersome affair, especially relative to the volume of your product they sell. As a customer service gesture to the retailers in your network, you collect fees from them and then report and remit those fees to the program
Reporting convenience scenario
Your business has a presence in the region where the Regulation applies and your product is sold in that market under your trademarked name. You are technically the legally obligated party. However, your product is sold through a distributor or retail chain that operates in many regions, not just the one in which the Regulation applies. In this case, you don’t really have a sense of the volume of your product that is being sold in the regulated region. The retailer or distributor knows exactly what volume of your product is being sold in the regulated region and, for the sake of simplicity, agrees to collect, report on and remit fees to the program on your behalf.
In for a penny, in for a pound scenario
Your company sells a house brand, in addition to products owned by other companies, in a regulated region. To the extent that you are selling a product that bears your trademark in the regulated region, you are a legally obligated party. You are not technically obligated when it comes to the other brands you sell as those trademarks are owned by other companies. However, as you are already collecting, reporting on and remitting fees for your own products, it may be easy for you simply do the same on behalf of all the other brands you sell.
In the end, the most important outcome for us is that fees are being paid on all regulated products. In BC, we have a bit more freedom than in some other regions to permit obligated parties (or “Producers”, as the Regulation puts it) to make arrangements with their various partners to assign the responsibility of fee reporting and remittance.
CESA simply needs written confirmation of the arrangements an obligated party has made with another company to report and remit fees on their behalf.
Looking to Remit Your Fees?
Click on the external link below to remit your fees for products you have sold over the past year
