£5 average emerges as cost of recycling televisions

Despite the start of producer and retailer responsibility for waste electrical and electronic equipment being delayed until June 2006, several reprocessors in the UK are already providing a recycling service for electrical equipment.

Prices for the recycling of computer monitors and televisions is somewhere between £3.50 and 7 per unit

And, following an industry survey carried out by letsrecycle.com the price for recycling a single cathode ray tube unit has emerged to be somewhere between £3.50 and £7. Local authorities have been assured by the DTI they will receive funding for separately-collected WEEE from the government until June (see letsrecycle.com story).

Since the recycling of CRTs is a relatively new process it had been thought possible that charges for taking waste equipment would vary considerably across the country. However, prices at the gate differ only on a relatively small scale between reprocessors.

In fact, the major differences in price came from single sites, where charges could be different depending on CRT sizes and quantity, several of the companies questioned actually had price ranges of around 10, while other prices differed only by two or three pounds.

Prices are not expected to change much in the coming months, despite the loss in additional income for reprocessors over the extra six months until the start of producer responsibility.

Debate
One area that does provide some debate was the question of how to charge, with several companies working costs out per unit, while others calculated prices by tonnage.

Sims Group is one company which offers its customers either the per-unit or tonnage option. Spokesman Myles Pilkington said: “We deal with a mixture of charging, depending on what the customer wants. We are happy to charge by unit, but for large tonnages we are more likely to deal in tonnes.”

Mr Pilkington indicated that the price charged will depend on the tonnage. He said: “Obviously the price will come down per tonne for a larger load because of things such as transport costs.”

And transport costs appear to be the main variable in charging, with most companies agreeing on very similar prices for the actual disposal of a CRT.

David Burton, director of Shropshire-based CRT Recycling Ltd, said: “It is difficult to judge the cost of the entire process because transport can be so different. A single television from Aberdeen will work out a lot more expensive than a lorry load of them from around the corner.”

Size
Another variable could come depending on the size of the actual CRT. Aberdare-based Citiraya offers a sliding scale depending on the size being dealt with.

Jim McDowell, projects manager for Aberdare-based Citiraya, said: “We charge by the kilogramme, but there isn’t a set price for that because it depends on what is included in the load. It is just as quick for us to do 20 large televisions as it is to do 20 small monitors. Our pricing scale reflects the products that we receive as well the size.”

At Shore Recycling in Perth, the company also offers different prices for each size of CRT, but Shore prices the reprocessing per unit. Malcolm Todd, commercial director, said: “The cost at the gate can differ depending on the size of the CRT, but if we have to pick up there will be additional costs added.”

Letsrecycle.com is holding a special conference on the way forward for waste electronics on October 12. For more details see the letsrecycle.com events page