ABB swappage scheme aids ISO14001 compliance

The new ABB swappage scheme is supported by a recycling programme that this year recycled 13 tonnes of waste variable speed drives, recovering over 90% of their component materials by weight. The ABB swappage scheme offers at least 17.5% off the list price of a new ABB drive and will swap out incumbent drives from any manufacturer.

The ABB recycling programme, now in its eighth year, takes these scrapped drives and recycles them according to the WEEE Directive, even though drives are not covered by the legislation.

Once the drive has been removed for recycling, ABB issues a certificate that can be used for environmental audits by end users complying with ISO 14001.

In the UK, ABB has an agreement with recycling company and approved waste carrier, RID, to transport and recycle the drives. The company collects the old drives from ABB Drives Alliance partners. In the case of large drives or large quantities of smaller drives, RID collects direct from the end user.

Jon Clews, ABB's recycling manager, says: "Each of our Alliance partners has a dedicated drives recycling bin and there is also a bin at our drives repair centre in St. Neots.

"One of the major advantages of our swappage scheme is that we already have the recycling infrastructure in place, meaning that customers considering swapping out old drives can rest assured that they will be recycled according to the regulations."

"Combined with our swappage scheme, the recycling programme is a very attractive incentive to companies to replace their old existing drives with the latest advanced models from ABB."