The company, which is part of the Home Retail Group, is working with lamp and bulb recycling specialists Recolight to introduce in-store collection facilities for the bulbs over the next six weeks. The scheme will use Recolights Bulbstore Mini collection containers.
While low-energy light bulbs can already be recycled at civic amenity sites, Recolight described its agreement with Homebase as an important step in creating a safe and convenient way to recycle the bulbs, which contain a small amount of the hazardous material mercury.
Low-energy light bulbs are expected to become a growing waste stream over the next few years as old style light bulbs are phased out under European law (see letsrecycle.com story). They are covered by the WEEE regulations, which place collection requirements on both producers and retailers.
Nigel Harvey, Recolights chief executive, said: Recolight is committed to making it as easy as possible for people to recycle their old low-energy light bulbs, and to raise awareness of the importance of doing so.
Homebase has over 70 million customers through its stores each year and we believe this partnership will enable us to spread the recycling message more widely and provide convenient collection locations for customers to take their old light-bulbs.
We are delighted by the commitment made by Homebase. This is a really exciting development which will be integral to helping us to raise recycling rates as more low-energy light bulbs start to reach end-of-life in the coming years.
As part of the partnership with Homebase, volunteers collecting light-bulbs in their community under the Recolight CoBRA scheme (see letsrecycle.com story) will also be able to use Homebase stores as drop off points, further improving facilities for low-energy light bulb recycling.
Tewkesbury
Recolights efforts to capture more low-energy light bulbs for recycling also saw it this week (April 20) join forces with Tewkesbury council to install five recycling banks across the borough to enable residents to recycle the waste stream.
Energy saving light bulbs cannot be recycled using the councils kerbside blue bins and previously the only other points for recycling the bulbs were the centres at Wingmoor Farm and Hempsted. The collected light bulbs will be sent to approved treatment facilities where the individual components of glass, plastic, and metal are separated and recycled to make new items. The mercury from each bulb is safety removed and recycled too.
As well as the local collection facilities, the Gloucestershire local authority has also launched the CoBRA volunteer recycling scheme to residents of the borough.
Julie Davies, environmental development officer at Tewkesbury, said; This scheme willenable us to expand our recycling service even further and offer easy low-energy light bulb recycling for residents across the borough. The recycling banks are in popular spots and we hope the partnership and the volunteering scheme will help us to improve our recycling performance.
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