WEEE recycling campaign launched

A new campaign to encourage the recycling of waste electrical and electronic items has been launched by Material Focus, formerly known as the WEEE Fund.

The Recycle Your Electricals campaign says it aims to prevent discarded electrical items from being fly-tipped or going to landfill which sees ‘precious resources’ being lost.

Recycle Your Electricals will aim to spread the recycling message

The campaign also says it will be launching two rounds of funding over the next year in support of organisations that make the recycling of WEEE more accessible. Last week, the WEEE Fund as it was known then, announced funding to support WEEE recyclers (see letsrecycle.com story)

Compliance Fee

The organisation behind the new campaign, Material Focus (the former WEEE Fund) is “not for profit” and was created in the first place by the Joint Trade Association (JTA) to administer the spending of money collected through the WEEE Compliance Fee mechanism.

Money for the fund comes from the UK’s compliance system for producer responsibility; when compliance schemes fail to obtain sufficient recycling evidence, they pay a compliance fee and the money has been allocated to a fund and some of this money is now being used to pay for the campaign.

“Recycle Your Electricals” says it will be investing in small waste electrical kerbside collections and reuse organisations. The funding will also support technical research that pilots innovative models of collection and helps improve efficiency in resource use and recycling.

Motivate

Scott Butler, executive director at Material Focus, said: “We’ve launched the Recycle Your Electrical campaign because we want to motivate and support millions more people to reuse and recycle their unwanted electricals, saving precious resources from being lost forever.

“When we recycle our old electricals, we’re giving a new lease of life to the treasure hidden within – valuable metals like gold, copper, steel and aluminium. These materials can then be recycled and turned into everything from bicycles to life saving equipment, solar panels to new electronics – the possibilities are endless.”

Mr Butler added that people decluttering at home during the coronavirus lockdown should “prepare and store” old electricals in a bag, ready for recycling once disrupted recycling and kerbside collections go back to normal.

WEEE Support

The campaign follows the new WEEE Support Grants and Loans package, which was created to support the sector in maintaining the recycling of electrical items during the pandemic.

The campaign additionally offers information on nearby locations where WEEE can be recycled.

According to Material Focus, WEEE items are “one of the fastest growing sources of waste in the world” and recycled, instead of binned, electrical items could save “millions of tonnes of CO2”.