Volunteers drive low-energy light bulb recycling

A scheme which aims to use volunteers across the UK to collect low-energy light bulbs for recycling has been launched by a partnership between WEEE compliance scheme Recolight and Cornish-based community recycling scheme CoBRA.

The Community Bulb Recycling Alliance has begun signing up ‘Bulb Recycling Champions' nationwide who will take responsibility for collecting used low-energy light bulbs for recycling at sites such as Post Offices and local shops.

The ‘Champions' are being provided with specially-designed ‘Bulbstore Mini' containers, which can each store around 80 waste low-energy light bulbs and, when the containers are full, they are then expected to take them to a central bulking up point, such as a library, for collection by Recolight.

With ‘traditional' incandescent light bulbs being gradually phased out by 2012, volumes of low-energy bulbs, which are also known as compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), are expected to increase significantly over the next few years.

This was highlighted by Recolight last year when it revealed it had teamed up with Sainsbury's to run in-store collections of the bulbs alongside portable batteries (see letsrecycle.com story).

And, Recolight chief executive, Nigel Harvey, claimed that the new scheme also had a major role to play, explaining that: “This is a really important community initiative to keep a hazardous waste stream out of landfill. Recycling low-energy light bulbs is often overlooked but it's just as important as properly recycling a fridge or TV.

“Our specially designed collection containers will be visible in convenient community locations for the public to easily use,” he added.

The reusable and recyclables containers being used in the initiative were originally unveiled in July 2010 (see letsrecycle.com story) and feature an internal ramp system to stop the bulbs knocking into each other and leaking.

The partnership also stressed that the website being used to promote the initiative has been designed to minimise the amount of paperwork volunteers have to complete, while still ensuring that all necessary health and safety requirements were met.

The scheme won support from recycling minister Lord Henley, who said: “This initiative will enable people to take responsibility for light bulb recycling in their community and make the facilities much more widely available for householders to do so.”

CoBRA

CoBRA's involvement in the scheme comes after it was initiated in Cornwall in 2007 as a battery recycling initiative, and its creator, Mark David Hatwood, said he hoped the bulb project would repeat the success of the batteries scheme.

“We hope that the low-energy light bulb collection scheme can prove to be as successful as the battery scheme which collected over 35 tonnes of batteries in just two years in one county alone,” he said.