After being purchased by WasteCare, Midex RT Ltd, the Camberley based WEEE recycler, has increased recycling rates by over 40 per cent in a year through offering a unique door-step amnesty collection service. Aptly named “WeeeCollect”, the service has been running for just over a year and offers householders a free door-step collection of all types of WEEE. The company works in conjunction with local authorities to provide amnesty days for waste to be collected direct from homes. The service has proved hugely popular; as householders often have old electrical items around the home that they haven’t got round to recycling.
Alison Hull, Community Champion for Midex explains: “Last year we offered the pilot service to over 250,000 homes across a number of Council regions to evaluate the viability of running a free scheme. We knew from EA data that over 70 per cent of WEEE was not knowingly being recycled and we could see the current regulations and recycling network was not going to expose this material. By offering a free service to encourage people to clear out garages and empty cupboards, we knew most of the WEEE we collected would have otherwise been lost.”
Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council were the first to come on board and support the trials in July followed by Reading Borough Council in December. Over 250 tonnes of WEEE will be generated in a year from these two projects alone. Following the success of these pilot projects, Midex now plans to roll out this popular service across the UK.
Pam Hudson, Operations Manager for Midex says: “Operational costs are high and margins low but the Midex model has achieved a very small carbon footprint, beating the CA site alternative and matching retail in-store take-back schemes. We report all recycling data back to the council so they are able to measure accurately their individual recycling performance. We have also launched another ground breaking service “WeCollectWaste” this service will handle all other types of recyclables for businesses, e.g. batteries, confidential documents , lighting and general office waste.”
WeeeCollect.com is a free service for retailers and has an exclusive agreement with BatteryBack the nations leading battery recycling scheme. Midex is unique in its combination of providing a nationwide collection fleet, a network of their own recycling facilities and most importantly a home for the recovered metals, plastics and glass. In addition to this the company provides the all important evidence as Midex has an exclusive contract with WeeeCare plc to provide low cost evidence for WeeeCare members.
Turning “lost” waste into evidence has to be today’s equivalent of turning base metal into gold. Midas would have been proud!
Visit www.weeecollect.com or wwww.WeCollectWaste.com for further details