Recycle for London, the public awareness campaign delivered in partnership by the Greater London Authority and WRAP, said it was hoping to avoid a deluge of unwanted analogue television sets being disposed of, ending up in landfill, where it says chemicals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic can end up in water sources and cause soil contamination.
The campaign estimates that around 18,000 tonnes of electrical waste were thrown away in 2011, much of which was sent to landfill.
The capitals analogue television signal will be phased out gradually, with BBC2 the first channel to be shut off permanently from Wednesday, with the remaining channels set to be switched off by April 18.
Reuse
Recycle for London is encouraging residents to find out about the options they have for recycling waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in their areas, with London boroughs offering kerbside collections of bulky waste and WEEE collection sites at Household Waste Recycling Centres.
Residents are also being urged to check if their television set can be reused, with many analogue television sets still able to work when plugged into a digital converter box.
The campaign has singled out a free collection by British Heart Foundation Furniture & Electrical Stores which collects those good quality, larger household items including TVs. This collection service can be booked online or by telephone. The Foundation can only accept TVs that are in good working order with a scart socket and remote.
A spokesperson for Recycle for London, said: Increasing the amount of electrical equipment that gets reused or recycled can help protect the capitals environment, reduce the amount of waste needlessly thrown away and in turn cut costs for Londons boroughs.
Londoners have a range of options to reuse or recycle their old television sets. As the capital prepares for the digital switchover this month, anyone who needs more information on how to avoid creating unnecessary waste should check out the Recycle for London website for details.
1001 TV Sets
To mark the switchover to the digital signal, renowned video artist David Hall opened an art exhibition titled 1001 TV Sets at the University of Westminster last month (see letsrecycle.com story), using more than one thousand discarded televisions collected from civic amenity sites.
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The installation sees all of the sets tuned at random to an analogue station, with the televisions broadcasting only static as the signals are switched off. The exhibition, which runs until April 22 has been supported by WEEE compliance scheme DHL Envirosolutions. After the exhibition has finished, the television sets will be recycled by WEEE reprocessor SWEEEP, at its approved authorised treatment facility (AATF) in Kent.
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