Waste electric recycling bins

The Council has received funding from the national Distributor Takeback Scheme (DTS) to boost the amount of Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) reused and recycled.

And 35 specially liveried collection bins, similar to clothing banks, but bright pink, are to be placed around the town, with one of the first being located in Cluster of Nuts car park on Hallfield Lane.

The banks are ideally suited to smaller electrical items such as irons, hairdryers, phones, games consoles or anything with plug, battery or charger.

Larger electrical items such as microwaves and lawnmowers can be taken to the city’s Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRC) including the one at Thorp Arch.

Coun Alan Lamb (Wetherby Ward, Conservative) said: “This is an excellent idea.

“I’m sure we all have drawers and cupboards full of old chargers and other bits that either don’t work or aren’t for your current phone.

“What a great way to be able to get this hardware recycled rather than just binned.”

Coun Norma Harrington (Wetherby Ward, Conservative) said: “We are fortunate enough to have an HWRC close to Wetherby, but many people - myself included - never think to take our small electrical items there.

“With this recycling bank in such an accessible public place, it should become much easier to recycle an item and prevent it going to landfill.

“However, may I just add, that if the bank is full, please take your item home and bring it back another day.

“This prevents the area around the recycling banks becoming a

mess or even complaints of fly-tipping!”

Coun Linda Richards (Wetherby Ward, Conservative) said: “It is sadly a fact of life that appliances aren’t made to be repaired in the same way that they used to be.”

She added: “Although facilities do exist for recycling electrical equipment, often they were not convenient and therefore not used as well as they could be.

“This initiative hopes to reverse that and make it much easier to recycle, and I am fully in support of it.”