Memories of the fridge mountain which built up as a result of the UK's lack of preparations to recycle fridges under similar EU orders have spurred officials at the Department of Trade and Industry to breach EU law rather than risk another fiasco.
The government is proposing to delay recycling until January 2006.
Meanwhile 90% of household electrical goods will continue to be dumped in landfill sites.
The directive on waste electronic and electrical equipment is designed to prevent a million tons of household electrical equipment being sent to landfill sites each year.
It forces high street retailers such as Dixons to offer recycling of old equipment to customers.
But the volumes of electrical equipment being dumped each year - 2m televisions, 3m fridges and freezers, 2m computers, and 2.2m washing machines - meant traders feared they would be overwhelmed.
Consumer electronics alone are responsible for 40% of the lead found in landfill sites and watercourses, contaminating drinking water supplies.
Cadmium accumulates in the human body, in particular the kidneys.
In addition, about 3,000 tons of methylated mercury is released into the environment each year.
Yesterday Whitehall official Chris Tollardy, who is in charge of implementation of the European directive, wrote to a consortium of retailers conceding that "the government has encountered major practical difficulties in meeting the directive's legal deadline of 13 August 2005 for implementation of its obligations on producers and retailers".
The Recycling Electrical Producers' Industry Consortium (Repic) which includes household names like Indesit, Bosch, Siemens, Hoover Candy, Panasonic, Philips, Sony, Electrolux, Kenwood, Hitachi and Sharp, want consumers to pay a "recycling fee" when they buy equipment to pay for the cost of disposing of old units.
The government has a poor record on implementing EU environmental directives on time.