Cherwell district council has recycled more than 19 tonnes of small waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) since it began kerbside collections of the waste stream from residents in March this year.
The north Oxfordshire council is offering householders small pink plastic carrier bags large enough to hold items such as hairdryers, mobile phones and mp3 players, which can be left out alongside residual waste or recycling collections at the kerbside.
Items collected for recycling through the scheme are processed at Sims Recycling Solutions WEEE reprocessing facility at Daventry, Northamptonshire.
The collections are being offered in addition to the councils dedicated WEEE bring-banks, which accept larger items such as televisions and refrigerators. And, according to the council, the equivalent of 9,500 toasters or 17,000 hairdryers has been collected since the scheme began three months ago.
Councillor Nigel Morris, Cherwells lead member for clean and green, said: As a council we regularly promote the benefits of recycling, but we understand that it is not always possible for people to visit our bring banks. By providing initiatives whereby people can recycle even more items from home it makes the process a lot more customer friendly and as a result, even more environmentally friendly.
Supply
The 100,000 WEEE bags needed for the initiative were provided by Leeds-based polythene bags supplier Cromwell Polythene.
The companys sales director, Paul Fleetwood, said: We have been supplying Cherwell district council with a range of waste management and recycling products for more than 11 years. The WEEE bags, which are distinctly coloured for ease of identification and may be used for any small electrical household product, such as radios or kitchen appliances, have clearly made an impact with residents, helping to get the scheme off to a flying start.
Cherwell is the latest in a growing number of councils offering kerbside collections to residents following the launch of a similar scheme by Bath & North East Somerset, which received funding from the governments 250 million weekly waste collection fund (see letsrecycle.com story).
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Earlier this year, a kerbside collection scheme set up by the North London Waste Authority (NLWA), its partner compliance scheme DHL Envirosolutions and WEEE Reprocessor SWEEEP Kuusakoski, in April 2012 saw 2,900 collections made from households in its first 11 months of operation (see letsrecycle.com story).
Other councils, including Woking, Swale and Surrey Heath councils have established collections of small WEEE items through funding from the WEEE Local Project Fund, set up under the Distributor Takeback Scheme to support WEEE recycling initiatives (see letsrecycle.com story).
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