The amount of electrical waste being recycled locally went up last year.
Kilkenny County Council had a 22% increase in electrical goods being brought to their recycling centres in 2020, while the figure went up 17% in Carlow.
But WEEE Ireland is worried that a lot of stuff that could be recycled is going into general black bins because of the lockdown restrictions with a 29% decrease in January.
CEO Leo Donovan says the first lockdown was good for WEEE recycling but now people aren’t travelling to their local centres. He told KCLR News “During the shut-down period last year people had a little bit more time in their homes to clear out the attic, clear out that old garage and any electrical appliances they identified they brought to their local civic amenity site for recycling and when we talk about electrical recycling people think a lot about their dishwashers and washing machines and fridge freezers, maybe televisions, but we’re also talking about other electrical appliances like power tools or like electrical toys, effectively anything that has a battery or plug”.
He adds “There’s a forever growing volume of electrical appliances going on the market, we’re buying more electrical appliances year-on-year so that requirement to take back more and more tonnage is forever increasing so we need to encourage people to take back as much as possible, now obviously in the month of January with the current shut-down people haven’t been able to go to the civic amenity sites as much as they would so we’re really encouraging people not to throw the electrical appliances, no matter how small they are, into their general waste”.
Mr Donovan also says you can take old electrical products to a local authority recycling centre or to an electronic shop which are still open during lockdown as emergency retailers, noting “They will take back all your small appliances or large appliances, you can just bring them back, no purchase required, it’s a free service that they offer to their customer base and also the hardware stores, particularly for electric tools and for lighting like CFLs fluorescent tubes, small energy bulbs that you’ve been using in the past, you can bring back them to your hardware stores and they will take back your lighting equipment as well”.
