Recycle Week 2010 to focus on waste electricals

The revelation, on WRAP's Recycle Now Partners website, comes as the organisation prepares to launch a Spring drive next week (March 1) in a bid to get residents to recycle a wider range of materials – including WEEE.

Recycle Week has been held every year since 2004 and has traditionally been used to encourage waste reduction and recycling in general, without singling out any materials or products for special attention. The change in approach this year, alongside two previous WEEE campaigns organised by WRAP and BIS in the run up to Christmas, shows that the organisation is particularly keen on improving recycling rates in this area.

In particular, recycling rates for small WEEE are very low. This is largely because producers are not required to fund collections of WEEE from households, and so many councils do not offer this service and many electrical items end up in the residual waste bin.

WRAP explained that its campaign in June would also continue the ‘let's waste less' theme it announced for Recycle Week 2009.

It said: “Join us in promoting 'Let's waste less' this Recycle Week between 21-27 June 2010. This year the focus is on waste electricals. Campaign resources will be available shortly.”

Spring campaign

In addition to outlining the focus of Recycle Week, WRAP said it would be launching a Recycle Now spring campaign next week aimed at showcasing the wide range of materials residents can recycle.

The initiative will encourage local authorities to provide more information to residents about what material can be recycled and where.

The Defra-funded body commissioned its own research into the recycling behaviour of residents and areas for improvement in a bid to inform the spring campaign. WRAP will publish the findings of the study next week.

The focus on widening material ranges echoes the conclusion of a report published earlier this month by the PackFlow group – which WRAP is a member of – which stressed that improvements in recycling rates be made from increasing capture rates rather than rolling out more kerbside services (see letsrecycle.com story).

Delivery of information on the campaign has been divided between documents sent directly to local authorities and made available on the Recycle Now Partners website – the communications resources site behind the Recycle Now campaign.

The document toolkit will help local authorities to shape media campaigns, as well as highlight information available for everyone online.

Susan Nisbet, manager of public relations at WRAP, told letsrecycle.com: “It is to help people to know what they can recycle locally. It is building on the fact that we know people want to know more about recycling and we want to help people know what can be recycled locally.”

“I think the fact is if we know 95% of people are recycling at least one thing there is a lot of potential there and people need not miss out on the range of things that are available and so it is about helping people know what they can do.”