WEEE recycling

[Tom Smith]

Hi all

Does anyone know where I can take a bag of old computer cables, phone chargers etc for recycling? The Southwark website suggests there is a WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) bank at the big Sainsburys, but all I could find there was a bin specifically for batteries and lightbulbs, which is obviously no good.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,

Tom

[ed_pete]

I guess you've already been here http://www.southwark.gov.uk/info/10070/recycling/2550/weee_banks

[ruffers]

I just take them to the tip / recycling centre on Old Kent Road.

[thombe]

should be called WEEEcycling then ;-)

On a more serious note, I take everything to the Old Kent Road one, only thing to add is that they have now introduced proof of address to make sure you are from Southwark, so worth taking something with you.

[Penguin68]

Veolia bring a van round to Sainsbury's on DKH once a month (first Wednesday in the month) - I know that they will in June, but it is up to Sainsbury's whether they continue - they would take these items I believe - they take 'small electricals'. They give away the garden refuse sacks from the van (when they have any) and will also sell their composting bins (for ?10).

[Sue]

Penguin68 Wrote:

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They give away the garden refuse

> sacks from the van (when they have any)

The garden refuse sacks are also available from Dulwich Library, except that they get a delivery once a week which "only lasts a few days" (why don't they ask for more, then!) and there is no phone number to ring to check if they actually have any before you make a trip up there.

However the park office in Dulwich Park also usually has a load if the library has run out.

[Nigello]

DL gives out five sacks per person, which I think is quite a lot, especially given that most people have brown bins. How about a three-per-person limit?

[peckham_ryu]

How much bad karma do I get for chucking electronics in the blue recycling bin? I assume that it all goes down a conveyor belt, a sorter tuts loudly, complains about the idiot who doesn't know that WEEE has its own special place, and then promptly chucks it on a WEEE pile anyway.

(Please rate karma on a scale of slug to tigress for future reincarnation.)

[Sue]

Nigello Wrote:

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> DL gives out five sacks per person, which I think

> is quite a lot, especially given that most people

> have brown bins. How about a three-per-person

> limit?

That wouldn't be enough for me or for anyone with a lot of rampant climbers being cut back, for example.

I don't have space for a large brown bin so I rely on the paper sacks for garden waste.

[Veolia Southwark]

Sadly, the WEEE bank at Sainsbury's Dog Kennel Hill was removed very recently owing to continued vandalism. Please see here for the list of other WEEE bank locations: http://www.southwark.gov.uk/info/10070/recycling/2550/weee_banks

I will chase the web team to get this page updated accordingly.

The Mobile Recycling Centre will again be in the car park at Sainsbury's Dog Kennel Hill on Wed 1 Jun between 10am and 1pm and accepts the following:

>Books (new!)

>Clothes and shoes

>Small electrical appliances

>Wood and timber

>Metal

>CDs/DVDs

>Printer cartridges

>Batteries

>Lightbulbs of any kind

[SingingWilks]

There's a small electrical items recycling bin in the Peckham Rye car park on Straker's Road.

[Burbage]

peckham_ryu Wrote:

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> How much bad karma do I get for chucking

> electronics in the blue recycling bin? I assume

> that it all goes down a conveyor belt, a sorter

> tuts loudly, complains about the idiot who doesn't

> know that WEEE has its own special place, and then

> promptly chucks it on a WEEE pile anyway.

You'd not be far wrong. But your future sluggishness depends on a number of awkward and unresolvable questions.

First, it's not the council that does recycling, despite taking the credit for it. And it especially doesn't do the recycling of electronics. Veolia doesn't do that either, though Veolia does run the Mobile Recycling Service. Which, as many will have realised, is bugger-all use to anyone, not least because the only things it takes that don't go in blue bins already can already be dumped in Sainbury's car park, without the need for a bloody van.

Admittedly, the very recent removal of Sainsbury's electrical bin (a weirdly anonymous and stunted tank with a gaping, flappy chute you'd have to shove your arm up, and which would't take anything bigger than a kettle, and only then if it was endways), does give the pointless little van some purpose. But given the little van is full of bins for all the other things, as well as upbeat signage, garden refuse bags, two operators and enough pointless leaflets to give a tourist officer a damp awakening, the only point of having it is a standard-sized dustbin that's easily challenged by anything much bigger than a toaster.

Not that anyone noticed. Before it chose to manifest itself at Sainsbury's, it turned itself out glumly at "Dulwich Library", by which was meant the car-park of the Plough. But it never got much custom. Usually, in my experience, because the useful bin was always full. One printer and it's game over. They then, briefly and silently, changed it's allotted space to an unspecified location in "Dulwich Park". Although it's tempting to imagine they were hoping to lure the leisured classes out on Wednesday mornings to play hide-and-seek with knackered Dualits, it clearly didn't happen and so it moved to Sainsbury's.

Anyhow, although Veolia run it, they don't get paid by the council for recycling electricals. Or, if they are (which, come to think of it, they might), they're not supposed to be. For, thanks to the interfering bureaucrats at the EU, it's tha manufacturers, distributors and retailers of electrical goods that are supposed to do the recycling. Not that they do. What they do, thanks to a loophole disguised as an initiative, is join a Distributor Collection Scheme (DCS). Of which, in Britain, there is one, run by a shadowy outfit called Valpak that also runs the public-facing recyclemore.co.uk website which is so awake to the possibilities of the circular economy that it still has Manor Place flagged as Southwark's dump of record.

So, to the morality of blue-binning electrics. This really depends on what happens. Veolia are already being paid to "collect" electrical goods, by the industry in general through the DCS and ultimately us through the prices we pay for the goods. However, as the contract between Veolia and the council seems to allow Veolia to charge the council more if the 'quality' of recyclables is poor, and electrical recyclables seem to devalue blue-bin 'quality', then Veolia are probably able to get paid twice for errant light bulbs and toothbrushes. In that case, depending what exactly in the 'commercially confidential' contract that will have, inevitably, been drafted by council bureaucrats with, thanks to that self-same confidentiality, no incentive to do a proper job, it may be that every illicit electrical you casually blue-bin might remove urgent social care from a dozen needy denizens.

Happily, both this moral quandary and the Mobile Recycling Service can be avoided. That's because, in 2012, the EU became so miffed with the frankly indolent reality of recycling (as opposed to the plethora of 'initiatives' that kept our 'creative industries' lucratively busy turning out vacuous bilge for billboards, internet and television loudly proclaiming how we should all be doing our bit or preparing for eternal torment), decreed that all large electrical retailers should have on-site collection points for electrical recyclables. They did not decree that they should advertise these facilities. But, nevertheless, there they are.

Which means that, since 2014, car-less residents with broken tellies have no longer had to trudge all the way to the Reuse and Recycling Centre, just off the Old Kent Road, but can instead simply nip across to Currys.

Of course, what the council would prefer you do is pay them ?18 to send Veolia round with a truck. That may be what happens for many. Those that don't just leave them on the street for kittens to tread on or children to eat, at any rate. But, to my mind, that's morally murkier. As we've already paid for Veolia to do that through the DCS, then paying any extra seems to almost encourage a fraud.

If your main concern is environmental, then it really doesn't matter. None of the bodies, objects or organisations concerned give a minimalist fig about that and, whatever you do, it'll almost certainly end up as landfill, probably in the country where the stuff was made, and labelled, if Whitehall can finesse it, as an 'international development' package.

[TE44]

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cf7f277a-26ee-4c2a-995e-d2d7dfd645cd

Scroll to veolia then click on link.

Fined almost half a million after accident

With recycling.

[Tom Smith]

Thanks very much everyone for the very helpful responses. I took them over in the end to the bin on Peckham Rye common which worked perfectly.

Now, a follow-up question... does anybody know whether, and if so how, I can recycle old plastic CD cases?

[singalto]

Is the van going to be at DKH Sainsbury's today?