It aims to build on work undertaken by CoBRA in Cornwall since 2007, where, working with Cornwall council, it has 58 collection tubes around the county, situated in locations such as post offices, local shops and libraries.
The initiative focuses on what the scheme's managing director, Mark Hatwood described as “hard-to-reach” sites, and has also been taken up by Torbay council in Devon.
Mr Hatwood claimed that the 35 tonnes of waste portable batteries the scheme has yielded to date in Cornwall meant it was “very comparable” to the yield from WRAP's kerbside battery collection trials, which suggested the approach was the most cost-effective way to collect from households (see letsrecycle.com story).
“The WRAP kerbside figure was from two times as many households and produced less than three times as many batteries,” he told letsrecycle.com.
In Hertfordshire, the CoBRA initiative is being based on volunteers taking responsibility for a battery collection box provided by ERP, and placing it in what Mr Hatwood described as “anywhere that there is a large influx of people”.
“All the volunteer does is become an ambassador for a tube and every time it's full they take it to a CA site,” he explained, noting that the volunteer did not have to be registered as a waste carrier to move the material.
“The way it works is that under the low risk permit if you are a volunteer working on behalf of someone you can work under the council or compliance scheme's waste licence,” he said, adding that, in the case of Hertfordshire, any volunteers would be working under the council's licence.
Scott Butler, ERP's general manager, added: “We're hoping the volunteers will be great advocates for battery recycling. They will help raise local awareness of battery boxes, as well as reducing carbon emissions by making use of existing journeys. This scheme will enhance ERP's collection network, which is growing all the time.”
Battery Regulations
While the Battery Regulations mean that, since February 1 2010, all retailers selling more than one pack of four AA batteries a day on average have had to provide free in-store take-back of waste portable batteries, Mr Hatwood claimed there was still an important role to be played by the volunteer-led approach.
In particular, he pointed towards the fact that, under the regulations, retailers do not have to provide a collection box, they just have to take waste batteries off a member of the public if they request it, and highlighted the “low awareness” among retailers of their obligations.
He also highlighted the competition in some larger shops for floorspace and said: “The beauty of local stores is that a box like that so prominent you can't miss it. It seems to me a lot more practical to have a small local location.”
Claiming that “the future of waste is more community involvement,” Mr Hatwood explained that “it's a fantastically good way to get people going and for a council its fantastic having volunteers involved in it”.
He added that were further benefits to councils due to the service not costing them anything, and claimed: “The manufacturer wins so the end user wins because the price of batteries won't go up.”
Making a call for volunteers, Hertfordshire county council's executive member for waste, Derrick Ashley, said: “Hertfordshire has an excellent recycling rate but it seems batteries are slipping through the net. We would now like to hear from volunteers who would be interested in working with us on this scheme.”
Mr Hatwood said that the organisation was not aiming for a set number of volunteers, explaining that “I'd love to see 100 signed up in six months but you never know people are going to take to it” – but, he added that he expected the number of volunteers to increase as more people heard about the initiative.
As well as revealing that he was looking all over the country to spread the initiative, Mr Hatwood said: “I am already talking to Cornwall about transferring the model to take on low energy light bulbs.”
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