Tesco and ASDA sign up to BatteryBack
November 26, 2009 at 10:21 am
In May this year legislation was passed to bring into effect, in the UK, a three year old EU directive, obliging all large retailers and manufacturers of batteries to offer recycling facilities in-store by 1 Feb 2010.
The eventual aim is for 25% of all household batteries to be recycled by 2012, with the figure rising to 45% by 2016. Currently the huge majority of these are sent to landfill. Less than 3% of portable batteries are recycled, amounting to a staggering 30,000 tons each year.
Last month, just two days before the deadline for major retailers to say which scheme they would be joining, two of the UK’s largest supermarket names, ASDA and Tesco, allied themselves with BatteryBack, a compliance scheme run jointly by Leeds-based WasteCare and Veolia ES, a giant in the waste management industry.
ASDA, which manufactures and sells fifteen different makes of battery, has said that it will be aiming to have a recycling scheme up and running in its stores ahead of the 1 Feb 2010 deadline.
Tesco meanwhile plans to have its in-store takeback scheme operating in the New Year.
Morrisons was ahead of the game in that it was the first supermarket giant to have a collection scheme in many of its stores several months ago. It too has joined BatteryBack.
BatteryBack currently has over 2,000 collection points in the UK and they aim to increase this figure fifteen-fold to 30,000 by the end of 2010 and to double that figure to 60,000 by the end of 2012.
In order to find out where your nearest collection point is, just type your post code into the relevant box on the website.
Finally 😀