Recolight, the UK’s WEEE compliance scheme for the lighting industry, has triumphed at the Rushlight Awards winning the Waste Management Award for its low-energy light bulb collection solutions the Bulbstore Mini and Bulbstore Maxi.
The Rushlight Awards are a celebration of furthering environmental technology and innovation in the UK covering sectors as varied as renewable energy, clean fuels, energy efficiency, green products and services, waste, and environmental management. The Waste Management Award recognises the most environmentally effective resource collection, separation and handling arrangements for the whole waste cycle, and the judging panel especially commended Recolight for its collection solutions for low-energy light bulbs.
Nigel Harvey, Recolight chief executive said; “We are very proud and pleased to have won this award. It is recognition of all the hard work and dedication put in by the team to expand our consumer collection network and ultimately increase recycling rates of low-energy light bulbs.”
Responding to the need to increase consumer awareness of the importance of recycling low-energy light bulbs, Recolight developed the Bulbstore Mini which is the first and only purpose built waste light bulb collection container for indoor locations, in the UK. It has been independently tested and approved for use in indoor environments, providing a safe solution to the problem of collecting this hazardous waste stream. To get the Bulbstore into community locations, Recolight partnered with CoBRA (Community Bulb Recycling Alliance) inviting volunteers to become ‘recycling champions’ and to take responsibility for low-energy light-bulb recycling in their local community. By registering on the Cobrascheme website, volunteers are sent a container and provided with all the necessary paperwork to take responsibility for collecting the waste lamps and taking them to their nearest bulking up point.
The Bulbstore Maxi is a large container for outdoor use, developed for retailer and local authority bring sites. 240 are now in use at Sainsbury’s stores nationwide. As it is important to minimise breakage of lamps deposited in the Bulbstore, an internal ramp system was designed which allows the bulbs to roll gently to the bottom of the container. The Bulbstore Maxi is also safe and secure, and cannot be easily accessed.