Digital River e-commerce suite aids with levying environmental fees

As Gartner has recently proclaimed, businesses aren't just interested in Green IT, they're interested in IT that helps satisfy green initiatives.

Digital River, which provides a suite of services for enabling e-commerce, has come up with something that definitely falls into the latter category. Specifically, the company has come up with a feature for its e-commerce software that helps electronics companies collect fees related to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE).

Here's some context: WEEE, which is big across Europe, requires that any company ("producer") that has brought an electronic or electrical product into the European Commission to assume the obligation related to its responsible disposal. Some companies have begun to charge fees at the point of sale to cover this, which may or may not be made visible to the consumer. The feature that Digital River has developed allows you to levy this fee and show it. The challenge is that the fee might be applied differently from country to country. Some don't really want consumers to see the fee, while others require that it be exposed. Digital River's software lets you do either.

This is a feature that is embedded into the core feature set of the Digital River e-commerce suite, so you don't have to pay more to use it, according to Digital River executives.

So, if your company offers e-commerce of its Web site AND it has e-commerce capabilities in countries like France or Germany, it may want to read up on these issues. If you're interested in learning more about WEEE or about how other environmental directives might impact your e-commerce activities, you can visit this link on the Digital River Web site.