Community group SOFA (Suppliers of Furniture and Appliances) Leicestershire is in the process of setting up a new centre where it expects to take nearly 500 waste appliances, such as fridges and cookers, a month. The service will initially serve households in the Blaby district council area.
CRED (Community Recycling and Economic Development) has given the organisation 213,150 over a three year period, towards the expansion.
Moved on
SOFA co-ordinator, Richard Featherstone said of the target: “We are currently taking in about 200-300 waste electrical appliances a month but we are hoping to get this up to about 475 appliances a month, by May 2005.”
Mr Featherstone explained that the expansion meant SOFA could be less discriminatory when taking in waste items and could therefore increase the number of these items coming through its gates.
“Previously,” he said, “only items in very good condition were accepted but the new service will take goods in poorer condition and will pass on any item that can't be reworked to a reprocessor. We are expecting to be able to reuse about 40% of the goods at first but this might drop to around 25% as we become less discriminatory.”
He added that SOFA was currently working with a metal reprocessor, but it was likely the group would be looking for other reprocessor in various sectors in the future.
In order to reach the 475 figure Mr Featherstone said an option was to expand the service to other local authorities. “If we can make it work in Blaby, as soon as we can get more funding we would look at offering the service to neighbouring councils.”
Moved on
The Environment Agency, which has granted 10,000 to the project said it was supporting SOFA because of the increasing importance of diverting waste electrical items from landfill. A spokesman for the Agency said: “We need to drastically reduce the amount of electrical goods being disposed of in landfills.
“We see partnerships with organisations such as SOFA as an ideal way of achieving this and other objectives, with the project in this instance benefiting both the environment and the people of Leicestershire.”
Mr Featherstone said despite the fact that the WEEE legislation might not be implemented until August 2005, SOFA aimed to be ahead of the game. “When we first thought about this expansion, we expected the legislation would be in place by now. We are now one step ahead. And we will help to advance Blaby Council further up the national recycling league tables.”
LINKS:
SOFA Leicestershire is a member of the Furniture Recycling Network .
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