The Environment Agency recently announced that they were best chums with eBay and had joined forces to stop illegal vehicle breakers. Business sellers who list used vehicle parts on eBay now receive a pop up message to highlight that an environmental permit is needed to break vehicles and directing them to the Environment Agency section of the gov.uk website. What the Agency didn’t announce is that they have recently issued ESOS fines to both eBay and their subsidiary Gumtree.
The Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) is a mandatory energy assessment scheme for organisations in the UK that meet the qualification criteria. Organisations that qualify for ESOS must carry out ESOS assessments every 4 years. These assessments are audits of the energy used by their buildings, industrial processes and transport to identify cost-effective energy saving measures.
eBay and Gumtree were both issued with ESOS fines for “Failure to comply with an enforcement notice, contrary to Regulation 46(1) of the Energy Saving Opportunities Regulations 2014”. Both companies face a fine of £12,150 which is piddling compared to their revenues and the public shame will hurt more than the financial penalty.
15 businesses were fined a total of £157,770 with ESOS fines ranging from £1,560 to £45,000.
It’s worth emphasising that eBay and Gumtree haven’t necessarily done any thing worse than fail to do their reporting in time. Turn the lights out when you leave for the weekend though guys… it helps the environment doesn’t it!
