E-waste is a term to describe electrical or electronic equipment that are old, end-of-life or discarded. It is commonly known as Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)

Why is it important we talk about e-waste?

• E-waste is the fastest growing solid waste stream in the world
• In 2019 an estimated 53.6 million tonnes of e-waste was produced globally, but only 17.4% was documented as formally collected and recycled
• Lead is one of the most common substances released into the environment if e-waste is recycled, stored, or dumped using inferior activities, such as open burning
• Exposure to harmful chemicals can cause neurodevelopment, learning and behavioural outcomes in children

What measures are taken to prevent e-waste?

• Development and implementation of national e-waste management legislations that protect public health
• Producer and Distributor obligations
• Takeback schemes

How can I prevent e-waste?

• Acting to increase the life expectancy of existing hardware and devices. Regularly completing software updates and clearing out old files will help to improve the performance of electronics.
• Ensuring devices have extended warranty in place will not only help to resolve issues quickly when they do happen, but also help to keep WEEE functioning longer.
• If you’re a producer, join a WEEE compliance scheme. If you place more than 5 tonnes of EEE on the UK market in a compliance year, you must join a producer compliance scheme.

As the amount of e-waste produced continues to grow, we must change the way in which we manage and prevent e-waste from causing irreversible damage to the environment and communities. A collective action is required for said change to be effective. Consumers can be of aid by prolonging upgrading devices that still function, whilst producers can join compliance schemes to compile their evidence of recycled WEEE and EEE that you place on the market to ensure that their legal obligations are met in accordance with the UK legislation.

As one of the largest collectors and recyclers of WEEE in the UK, this enables us to provide sustainable low prices. With 17 service and recycling centres, we can meet a large proportion of our members obligations from the WEEE material we process.

If you’re unsure about your obligation or what your best option may be, you can contact our recycling team to discuss our collection service recycling@wastecare.co.uk

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Wastecare Environmental Trust worked with Yorkshire Children’s Charity and Battrecycle to build an outdoor learning space for Sherburn Hungate Primary School.

The children of SHP had limited access to safe green spaces in their personal lives due to the deprived area around them. The addition of the Forest School will allow the children to have access to a suitable outdoor space which the teachers will use for lessons and activities.

The Wakefield Top 100 is an initiative that aims to help shine a light on the businesses of Wakefield, promoting the district as a place to do business with unrivalled investment and growth opportunities.

The initiative is a joint project between Wakefield First as a part of Wakefield council, The University of Huddersfield and 3M Buckley innovation Centre, and is designed to celebrate and measure business growth across the region.

The Wakefield Top 100 will be published every spring, the list is compiled by Huddersfield Business School, using a set of consistent measures that include a combination of turnover, profit, employee numbers and growth.

Wastecare are a waste management provider that specialise in hazardous and challenging waste. Since 1980 Wastecare have offered a unique recycling and waste management service that enables them to service waste producers from all sectors and industries, from collection to recovery.

We are very proud as a company to have been recognised by the Wakefield District, and listed among some fantastic businesses who are helping to innovate industries within the area.

Read about all the companies that made it into The Wakefield Top 100 here

For any media enquires contact marketing@wastecare.co.uk

From April 6^th 2024, The Welsh Government is introducing new regulations to improve the quality and quantity of how businesses collect and separate waste. From tomorrow, it will become law that all businesses, charities, and public sector organisations must sort their waste for recycling. This law also applies to all waste and recycling collectors and processors who manage household-like waste from workplaces.

The new law affects these materials:

• Food
• Paper and card
• Glass
• Metal, plastic, and cartons
• Textiles
• Small WEEE

These materials will need to be separated for collection and collected separately.

There will also be a ban on:

• Sending food waste to sewers
• Separately collected waste going to incineration and landfill
• All wood waste going to landfill.

This law applies to ALL businesses, charities, and public sector organisations – they all need to separate their waste.

The only workplace that is temporarily exempt from this law is NHS hospitals and private hospitals, who will have an additional two years to comply.

Waste Hierarchy

These regulations include a requirement for any establishment or undertaking which imports, produces, collects, transports, recovers or disposes of waste, or which as a dealer or broker has control of waste, to take all reasonable measures that applies to the following waste hierarchy as priority when waste is transferred to another person.

• Prevention (Measures, taken before a substance, material or product has become waste)
• Preparing for re-use (Checking, cleaning, or repairing recovery operations, so products or components that become waste can be reused without any other preprocessing)
• Recycling (Any recovery operation by which waste materials are reprocessed into products, materials, or substances, whether for the original or other purposes)
• Other recovery (Any other operation the result of which is waste serving a useful purpose by replacing other materials which would have been used to fulfil a function)
• Disposal (Any operations which is not recovery. E.g landfill, incineration)

How can Wastecare help?

Due to new regulations small Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (sWEEE) must be separated from other waste streams before collection. Wastecare can collect your business’s WEEE, recycle or recondition these appliances, and offer a rebate on any value we recover.

sWEEE includes kettles, toasters, clocks, watches, laptops etc. Many of these items are commonly found in workplaces, and with the new regulations you MUST comply.

Regardless of type or condition of your business’s WEEE, Wastecare are here to help. We provide specialist WEEE containers, and a regular, licensed collection service via our nationwide network of vehicles.

Wastecare may provide rebates for WEEE if it is deemed fit for reuse at our AATF site in Normanton. We returned over £16 million to clients in 2023 from recovered materials.

If you import or place household electrical equipment or onto the UK market, you may need to register as a EEE producer and enrol with a Producer Compliance Scheme. If your company places portable batteries onto the UK Market you may also need to register with a Battery Producer Compliance Scheme.

As one of the largest collectors and recyclers of WEEE and the largest collector and recycler of portable batteries in the UK, this enables us to provide sustainable low prices. We also pass on any third-party EA-recognised evidence that is made available to us at cost price.

We are pleased to announce our partnership with, Yorkshire Children’s Charity, Batterecycle, and Elite Forest Schools, to support Sherburn Hungate Primary with their Forest School project!

About Sherburn Hungate Primary

The students and staff of Sherburn Hungate Primary (SHP), located just east of Leeds, are an inspiring community who prioritise the education and wellbeing of everyone who passes through the school. This is evident through the rapid growth of the school’s size, which originally only had one form per year group with 15 students per form. Fast-forward to today, they have expanded their class sizes and now have two forms per year group!

The Wastecare and Battrecycle team recently spent some time with the SHP staff. After explaining that during the expansion in pupil intake, the school quickly outgrew the school’s original values. So together with their students, they worked to create 26 new values. from A-Z, all aligning with what the students wanted to embody throughout their time at SHP. These values include:

• Determined
• Inclusive
• Mindful
• Respectful

The school prides themselves on these values and aim to never turn a child away when intaking new students.

On the back of these values, SHP have worked hard to educate the children on the importance of recycling and how they can implement it into their day-to-day life. The school is also split into four Houses, all championing an environmental theme – North is Electricity, East is Water, South is Sustainability and West is Recycling.

Why a Forest School?

SHP hope that with the rising popularity of social media among younger school children, building a Forest School will be key to encouraging them to reconnect with nature and enjoy being outside.

The school has a mixed intake demographic, with a large proportion of their pupils and their families living in poverty. Yorkshire Children’s Charity have been working with SHP for some time now providing grant funding for specialist equipment for disabled pupils, along with winter coats, school shoes, and Christmas presents for children who would’ve otherwise gone without.

The level of deprivation in the surrounding area unfortunately means a lot of these pupils can lead very isolated lives – this includes not having access to local parks or green spaces outside of their estate, and likely spending the 2020 lockdown inside the same four walls.

This is where Yorkshire Children’s Charity, Elite Forest Schools, Wastecare Environmental Trust and Battrecycle come in!

As a result of receiving their grant, SHP have built their Forest School across two areas of the school grounds. Features of their Forest School include:

• Accessible walkways
• A sheltered seating area with a fire pit
• Sensory pathways
• A mud kitchen
• A den building area
• Planting areas with raised flower beds to allow accessibility for children in wheelchair

The Forest School will provide not only a way to learn and connect with the natural world but also a space for self-reflection in challenging situations.

The children have also got stuck into the build! They were tasked with designing a path for the Forest School, in which each child filled a square with stones of their choice to create a path that will allow children with accessibility needs to go to and from the forest school. The paths have been tested, and proven acceptable for the children’s needs.

We can’t wait to see how the SHP’s Forest School develops and grows as we move into the warmer months!

SHP’s Forest School is the first project funded via Battrecycle and has provided a brilliant framework on how we plan to move forward and roll this initiative out nationwide. Building relationships with organisations such as Yorkshire Children’s Charity and Elite Forest Schools is fundamental to us getting these community projects off the ground as quickly as possible.

If you would like to follow along with SHP’s Forest School journey or potential future projects, check out Battrecycle’s website or their socials:

Instagram

Twitter

Battrecycle Funding Opportunities

They will be shortly launching their application process for community project funding via their website.

If you have any questions regarding the funding process, please to get in touch with their team at hello@battrecycle.org

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Who are Yorkshire Children’s Charity?

Yorkshire Children’s Charity are a new charity that comes with a huge amount of experience and a big heart.

Their mission is to transform the childhoods of the thousands of disadvantaged children throughout the region. They want to make sure that no child or young person in Yorkshire is left behind due to ill health, disability, or financial circumstance. They work hard to give young people a fair chance: a chance to live an inclusive life, full of opportunities to explore, where they can engage in the world around them.

Wastecare was the first recycler to roll out a national collection network for anyone wanting to provide their customers, employees, and visitors a safe disposal option.  Having rolled out over 8,000 free collection points over the past year, we are collecting vapes from many retailers and DCFs, while we do not export vapes or send them to another company for treatment.

Early into this initiative, the challenge that presented itself was to develop a safe, efficient, and cost-effective recycling and recovery solution. 

Wastecare Trials Mechanised Vape Recycling

The EA have banned the burning of post-consumer vapes; however, they have not as yet approved a mechanical treatment process. Instead, they continue to push hand-dismantling – arguably not a practical, cost effective nor an intrinsically safe solution.  At the same time the EA promote high temperature incineration of pre-consumer vapes. We provide this service both for unwanted and confiscated stock at our HTI facility in Kent.

With this in mind, we are very pleased to confirm that we have now achieved a safe, efficient, and cost-effective mechanised vape recycling and recovery solution for post-consumer vapes.

We have been running trials on an adaptation of our battery recycling plant to perform a mechanical treatment process. With several treatment lines for different waste streams including portable batteries, we have a track record in creating and operating mechanical and mixed manual/mechanical systems.

Furthermore, we have in-house treatment facilities for the downstream outputs of the process, with a high temperature incinerator dealing with the nicotine contaminated elements, and our channels with lithium battery recyclers to safely treat resulting batteries. For the process to be cost effective, we need build sufficient feedstock which we are currently building.

We believe this process fulfills the necessary environmental criteria: 70% + recovery, no discharge of nicotine to atmosphere, and no risk of fire.

Our Chairman Peter Hunt has said of the development:

“We are confident we will get approval on our new plant, although we expect, as will all environmental permits this will take time to processed and be awarded. In the meantime, we have a plan.”

Pending treatment, the vapes are stored at our licensed, permitted facilities. To encourage safe disposal of these devices, Wastecare are willing to subsidise the collection of vapes until such time Defra amend the regulations to encompass vapes and the EA award a permit for a viable plant in the UK.

“The race is on but no matter who is first to get approval to safely treat vapes, society, as a whole, should hopefully be the winner.” – Peter Hunt

For more information on our vape takeback schemes or WEEE producer compliance, please contact the team at compliance@wastecare.co.uk

For any enquiries regarding our vape recycling trials, please contact recycling@wastecare.co.uk.

Under the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Regulations in the UK, vape retailers will no longer be a part of the Distributor Takeback Scheme. Instead, all retailers selling vapes are obligated to provide customers with a service for the proper disposal of their vapes and e-cigs. Retailers must offer a vape takeback scheme from 1^st April 2024.

Retailers will be required to takeback vapes that offer the same function as those they sell in store – which is determined by functionality not brand. The return of vapes is on a ‘one for one’ basis, however this must be a free of charge service.

To set up a recycling service retailers must have an appropriate collection point in-store, and partner with an authorised waste management provider to ensure the safe disposal and recycling of the collected vapes. We would encourage retailers to enquire with their vape supplier(s) to establish if they have a vape collection scheme already in place.

Failure to adhere to these regulations not only exposes retailers to potential legal repercussions, but also continues to contribute to the environmental degradation caused by vapes thrown into general waste.

Vape FAQs

What vapes can be collected?

Both disposable and reusable vapes can be collected. We would encourage retailers to also have a battery collection bin alongside their vape bin. This enables customers who can disassemble their vapes to dispose of the battery separately ready for recycling.

How often do vape bins need to be collected?

It is the retailer’s responsibility to organise a collection with Wastecare once their bin is nearly full. We would recommend organising scheduled collection when a store’s average collection volume has been established.

Do the vape collection bins need to contain vermiculite?

No. Vermiculite when used to mitigate the risks associated with lithium-based batteries is used as a separation material to prevent ignition upon contact with one another. Upon assessment, the same risks do not apply to vapes as the lithium battery and their terminals are enclosed.

What happens to the vapes once they are collected?

Currently, many vape recyclers are having to dismantle vapes by hand in order to retrieve the lithium battery, nicotine fluid and filters for recycling and/or recovery.

This process is resource-heavy and expensive; therefore we are currently trialing a mechanised dismantling process for vapes into order to keep our costs low and increase efficiency.

It has come as no surprise to us at Wastecare, and the wider waste management and compliance sector, that the government has announced today (Monday 29^th Jan) the intention to ban disposable vapes in the UK. As well as banning single-use devices, the government is expected to introduce restrictions on flavours and marketing, as well as implementing higher taxes on vape products.

We know that as with any new bill, the likelihood of this ban being enforced is likely to come with an extended timeline of enforcement. Health Secretary Victoria Atkins has been quoted saying she was “confident the new bill would pass Parliament the time of the general election [expected to be this year] – with it coming into force in early 2025”.

The driving force behind the ban lies in the concern for rising numbers of youths taking up the habit due to the ease of access and sweet flavours of these vapes. However just as prevalent has been the environmental concerns regarding improper disposal and battery-related fires. The spotlight was firmly on the need for a solution when Material Focus published its findings last year on disposable vapes, calculating that a shocking 5 million vapes are thrown away every week. Undoubtedly this figure will have risen since then.

Like many in the industry, we are interested to see how the following is addressed in the coming months:

What will classify as a ‘disposable’ vape in regard to design

If there will be extended measures put into place to manage the illegal vape market. The Guardian revealed last year that millions of illegal and harmful vapes had been seized by trading standards in the past three years, with experts warning “this was likely to be the tip of the iceberg and that a “tsunami” of products were flooding in.”

Impact on funding solutions for disposable vape recycling once it becomes an illegal market

Whilst these questions amongst many others roll on – we cannot neglect the importance of spreading awareness amongst the public on responsible vape recycling. Disposable vapes will continue to be sold and discarded as this public consultation on smoking and vaping is driven forward – therefore the waste management sector must not lose momentum in pushing out collection points and educating users.

With over 5,500 vape collection points and counting, we at Wastecare will endeavour to continue pushing forward with responsible vape recycling and provide support and guidance to retailers and producers alike.

For more information on disposable vape collection and recycling, please contact our team at sales.enquiries@wastecare.co.uk or call 0800 091 0000.

If you are a vape producer or importer into the UK and would like to know more about your producer compliance obligation, contact our compliance team: compliance@wastecare.co.uk

Welcome to the February/March 2024 Issue of Wastecare’s Newsletter

In this edition, we discuss:

• Our upcoming Yorkshire Tour with Jumbo the Battery Elephant and Battrecycle to raise awareness on responsible battery recycling
• A whistlestop tour of our High-Temperature Incinerator, including how it works and the energy harnessed to produced electricity as a result
• Our rollout of remote engineer waste drop-off points, and the current demand for fallen stock clearance services
• How we are facilitating the collection and recycling of disposable vapes across thousands of collection points and counting nationwide
• The long-awaited WEEE regulations reform recently published by the government
• A look at the Transfrontier Shipping Regulations, raising the issue of the UK’s dependence on shipping our waste to our neighbours
• An invitation to join our February webinars on WEEE Regulations ahead of the consultation, and how to implement a takeback scheme

And much more. We hope you enjoy this latest issue of The Sustainable Insider.

View our newsletter here.

Alternatively, download our newsletter here.

For media enquiries, please contact marketing@wastecare.co.uk.

Moreover, aside from transport costs and the environmental impact of increased carbon emissions, outsourcing waste management while continuing consumption perpetuates an economically flawed cycle. And others are catching on. China, India, Turkey, and Vietnam amongst others have started refusing our waste, and The Netherlands have implemented a waste import tax to regulate volumes entering the country. Repercussions of our waste export trade hit the headlines in early 2022, when the Environment Agency incurred a £1million bill from Indonesia to repatriate illegally exported waste—a burden borne by taxpayers whilst leaving the perpetrators unpunished.

The need for change is glaringly evident in the pursuit of global net zero waste disposal. It’s time to challenge these practices and the status quo. Why can’t we process this material domestically when we have the capacity to do so?

Countries like Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden serve as key examples of having invested in sustainable, efficient, and clean waste recovery methods internally. Sweden’s model means that it recycles nearly half of what is thrown away, and the majority of the rest is utilised in waste-to-energy processes – leaving less than one percent reaching landfill. This continued investment in recycling practices to reach the EU’s recycling target of 65% by 2035 remains at the forefront of Sweden’s strategies.

Our call is for the UK government and regulators to champion recyclers and re-processors, whilst encouraging investment in cutting-edge technology to position the UK as a leader in waste management.

However we do want to stress that advocating for self-sufficiency in waste management doesn’t oppose free trade. While importing products can be economically justified, the scenario becomes more intricate concerning waste. Refuse Derived Fuels and Solid Recovered Fuels for instance, are often transported to Sweden and Germany for recovery, incurring additional costs for transportation, treatment, and resulting in higher-priced electricity and products.

Ultimately, it’s now more imperative than ever for the UK to leverage its domestic infrastructure to attract investments that elevate our waste management standards and reduce costs for all. While benefiting from a global economy, we must strive for self-sufficiency and carbon reduction in avoidable circumstances.