West Northamptonshire urged to recycle their electricals with launch of a new campaign

15 November 2023

West Northamptonshire Council has launched a new communications campaign to encourage residents across the area to recycle their electricals.

HypnoCat, the Recycle Your Electricals pink fluffy cat, will be hypnotising residents to recycle their electricals and he will appear in social media advertising across Northampton. 

The project will encourage residents to recycle small domestic electrical items, including toasters, kettles, sandwich makers, hairdryers, irons and other items alongside their household collections. Small items of waste electrical equipment, which will fit inside a carrier bag should be placed on top of your domestic waste bin as follows: 

• Daventry area residents: on top of the black general waste bin
• Northampton area residents: on top of the blue-lidded recycling bin
• South Northamptonshire area residents: on top of either bin
• Residents can recycle their single-use vapes at Household Waste Recycling Centres or return them to where they purchased them from. Please do not place them with your household waste collection.

This is one of over 40 UK projects funded by Material Focus, the not for profit organisation leading the Recycle Your Electricals campaign who have provided £20,000 worth of funding. This will lead the way in West Northamptonshire, joining other projects around the country in making it easier for 10 million UK residents to recycle their electricals.

The aim of the nationwide Electricals Recycling Fund is to significantly reduce e-waste and its environmental impact by making it easier for consumers to recycle their electricals. The projects that have been funded by Material Focus include a variety of recycling methods, from kerbside collections to more drop-off points in schools, community centres, and bring banks. Overall there will be over 400 new collection points plus kerbside collections for 5.5 million UK residents.

Recycle Your Electricals research has shown that 80% of consumers believe recycling is a good thing, and many of us already recycle things like paper and plastic. Research has also shown that most of us have unwanted electricals we want to get rid of, even if it’s just a drawer of cables - millions of electrical items are hoarded in UK homes. And yet 39% of people bin electricals rather than recycle them because they think it’s simply too hard to recycle. The aim of these projects is to overcome these issues by making it easier to recycle electricals.

With technology evolving at such a fast pace these days, older electrical and electronic items are often made redundant, so waste electrical and electronic equipment is the UK’s fastest growing waste stream.

While they might have been replaced by the latest model, many of these items contain valuable plastics and metals which can be recycled.   The good news is that it couldn’t be easier to recycle these items via your kerbside collection service. Using the service not only helps the environment, but it also reduces the risk of fires in our bin trucks and waste facilities.Cllr Phil Larratt, Cabinet Member for Environment, Transport, Highways and Waste

We are thrilled to support the new project from West Northamptonshire Council that addresses the pressing issue of e-waste.

By investing in improved collection and drop-off services and we are taking a significant step towards creating a more sustainable future by making it easier for 10 million more people to recycle their electricals.Scott Butler, Executive Director of Material Focus

More information about recycling electrical items and batteries can be found at www.westnorthants.gov.uk/weeerecycle and www.recycleyourelectricals.org.uk