Pink’s my favourite colour and now I’ve another reason to love it. My local council has introduced a new pink recycling bag for small electrical goods. Has a touch of pink brightened up your rubbish and do you plan to use it?
Everyone’s got a guilty draw. The secret location in your house that you stuff with electrical goods, in the hope they’ll magically disappear.
I confess that I have a little collection of goodies I’ve been meaning to take to the dump, but I’ve not quite got round to it.
No more trips to the dump
Don’t get me wrong, I love a weekend trip to the dump – genuinely I do. As I child I had nightmares of the ‘dump’ being a hideous pit where people went to bury their rubbish.
So when I first visited my local dump, imagine my surprise when I saw a big screen scrolling through how much of our local waste had been recycled after being disposed of at the dump. About 70% tends to be the regular figure of waste that’s recycled through the scheme.
My dump has drop off points to recycle your undies, toys and books and even a place to leave furniture for others to snap up.
Handy household collection
Well, thanks to my new pink recycling bad, I won’t need to make a trip for small electrical items. I can now leave batteries, my old TV remote and alarm clock out to be collected with my next recycling collection.
The Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) Directive isn’t new – it was introduced into UK law in January 2007, but my council has only recently turned this into a handy household collection.
The Directive aims to reduce the amount of electrical and electronic equipment being produced and to encourage everyone to reuse, recycle and recover it.
The waste is then collected and taken to recycling sites for sorting. Items are shredded to reduce volume and are mechanically separated into their component parts. The materials collected will then be used to produce a mixed grade plastic, which can be used to make street furniture. Any metals recovered are taken for reuse.
Will electrical recycling bags take off?
I was a little disappointed to see the pink bag is a one off. Once used, you need to replace it with a standard carrier bag. I’m not holding that against my council too much – it would be a bit counter productive to produce one waste product to enable you to recycle another. Though it does seem odd to use the pink bag to introduce the scheme, to then remove it altogether.
I’ve chatted to a few people around the office and it seems the scheme has yet to reach many other areas. Do you have the pink electrical recycling scheme – or equivalent – in your local area, and will you use it?
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