The meeting will come in the wake of an undercover investigation published by ITV News in late June which showed new and unused items including televisions, laptops and drones sorted into boxes marked ‘destroy’ at the online retail giant’s Dunfermline warehouse (see letsrecycle.com story).
On 23 June, the Labour MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, Catherine West, asked the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) “what discussions they had had with representatives of Amazon following reports of large quantities of usable electric goods being destroyed by that company?”
Waste hierarchy
Responding to the question, on 2 July, Mrs Pow said: “Businesses who handle waste including companies like Amazon are obliged to follow the waste hierarchy, under our Waste Regulations 2011, which requires action to prevent waste as the priority option. Failure to meet the legal obligation to take all reasonable steps to apply this can lead to enforcement action from the Environment Agency in England.
“No business should be sending unwanted electricals to landfill or incineration. We have a producer responsibility system in place to ensure all waste electricals are collected and treated properly, in line with the waste hierarchy.”
The minister added that her department had been “absolutely clear” with Amazon that more goods needed to be reused or recycled to support the government’s ambition to build a more circular economy. She said ministers and officials would meet Amazon “shortly”.
‘Landfill’
ITV News’ undercover footage showed items sorted into boxes and then loaded into lorries. The programme tracked the lorries and claimed that electrical items were taken to a recycling centre with the rest sent to landfill.
A spokesperson for Amazon emphasised to letsrecycle.com that it was not company policy to send items to landfill in the UK.
The spokesperson said: “We think it’s important to set the record straight: we do not send items to landfill in the UK. Every year we donate millions of products to charities across the country. We’ve got more work to do but our goal is to get to zero product disposal.”
Amazon says its priority is to resell, recycle or donate any unsold products to charitable organisations. “As a last resort” the company sends the remaining material to energy recovery.
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