UK local authorities are progressively improving their recycling regimes to meet the requirements and targets set in EU legislation. Much of the impetus to improve recycling rates comes from increasing costs. In North Somerset, for instance,the Council estimate that the cost of sending waste to landfill will rise from £4.6million in 2010/11 to £9.5million in 2016/17. Local taxpayers have to meet the cost of sending waste to landfill. In North Somerset this amounts to £65 per tonne and last year local residents generated 65,000 tonnes of landfill waste. Landfill tax constitutes part of the cost and it is currently set at £48 per tonne, but it is increasing by £8 a tonne annually.
North Somerset Council are currently introducing a new recycling scheme that will cost £200,000 more than the current budget, but they are looking to achieve much larger savings by increasing recycling and reducing residual waste sent to landfill. The Council estimate they will save £15 million over 7 years.
In addition to the financial savings, significant environmental benefits should follow. How will ths affect mobile phone disposal for example? Under the old regime, mobiles were not collected from households and they had to be taken to recycling centres that could be 5-10 miles from home. Unless householders sold their phones to commercial recyclers, they were likely to end up in landfill.
Under the new scheme recycling collections will increase from fortnightly to weekly and mobile phones will be accepted. This should encourage householders will almost worthless handsets to dispose of them responsibly. However, anyone owning a reasonably recent phone with residual value should sell it to a recycler for cash.