Councils urged to support WEEE recycling drive

A partnership of 61 organisations which handle Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), known as WEEE Connect, has produced an advert to raise awareness about WEEE recycling. The advert is set to air on December 26 and will run for four weeks on digital TV channels including Really, Yesterday, Blighty and Home.

Now, the partnership is asking local authorities to run local campaigns to help support it. Sixty-seven local authorities have already expressed an interest in publicising their WEEE recycling services alongside the advert.

The advert has been two years in the making and has cost around 89,000 to create – including 36,000 to produce the advert itself and a further 53,000 for the television advertising slots (see letsrecycle.com story). WEEE Connect has purchased enough airtime to show the advert 800 times over the four-week period, potentially broadcasting to up to 34.8 million adults.

Encourage

The 30-second advert demonstrates how waste electronics can be diverted from landfill and will encourage viewers to recycle any unwanted, unused or broken electronic equipment, rather than throwing it away.

The coordinator of the campaign and contracts manager at WEEE processor SWEEEP Kuusakoski, Justin Greenaway, said: This is a European first to have an industry come together to back a campaign like this. It is essential that we raise public awareness of WEEE recycling if we are going to comply with European waste regulations.

Currently, SWEEEP Kuusakoski estimates that around half a million tonnes of unused electronic items that could have been recycled ended up in general waste in 2010.

Awareness

Mr Greenaway said that there was a general lack of awareness as to why people throw so much electrical waste away every year. If you have a television to throw away people know they cant just put it in their dustbin, but a lot of smaller electrical items are easy to throw away, especially if you dont know that they can be recycled, he said.

The WEEE Directive was introduced at the same time as the smoking ban. While everyone knows not to smoke indoors, if you mention WEEE to most people you get a blank expression. There is a good infrastructure in place for recycling WEEE, we just want to make sure that people know how to use it.

Speaking in support of the campaign, business minister Mark Prisk said: Im pleased that the industry is leading from the front in encouraging the public to recycle their unwanted electricals. This is exactly the sort of approach we need if we are to meet our recycling targets without heavy handed government intervention. I want as many businesses, local authorities and ordinary members of the public as possible to get behind the campaign.

For a full list of WEEE Connect members, please visit the WEEE Connect website.