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Letter to Rt Hon Emma Hardy MP from Cabinet Office at Gloucestershire County Council

Published
Urgent action sought on national fridge and freezer recycling capacity

Dear Minister,

Urgent action sought on national fridge and freezer recycling capacity

First of all, congratulations on your appointment as Minister of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

I am writing on behalf of Gloucestershire County Council regarding the serious national capacity problems currently affecting the collection and treatment of waste fridges, freezers and other cooling appliances.

As you will be aware, councils across the country are experiencing significant disruption because the volume of cooling appliances awaiting collection is exceeding the capacity currently available within the treatment system.

This has now had a direct impact in Gloucestershire. Despite working extensively with our waste contractors to maximise available storage and maintain services for as long as safely possible, Gloucestershire County Council was required to temporarily suspend the acceptance of fridges, freezers and other cooling appliances at all of our Household Recycling Centres from August 8th.

This was a measure of last resort. Our sites had reached the point at which further appliances could not safely or lawfully be accommodated while insufficient material was being removed for treatment.

We recognise that Gloucestershire is far from alone. Similar disruption is affecting waste disposal authorities across the country and raises a wider concern about the resilience of the national Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment system, particularly the capacity available to collect, transport and process cooling appliances.

We therefore support the concerns recently raised with Defra by the National Association of Waste Disposal Officers (NAWDO).

Local authorities provide an essential part of the national collection infrastructure, but they cannot resolve a shortage of downstream treatment capacity themselves. Where collections from Household Recycling Centres are delayed or suspended, councils rapidly reach their permitted and operational storage limits. Residents may then find themselves unable to use the services on which they normally rely, while councils face additional operational costs and a heightened risk of inappropriate disposal or fly-tipping and costs associated with this too.

We would therefore welcome urgent action by Defra to:

  • work with Producer Compliance Schemes (PCSs) to ensure that their responsibilities for the collection and treatment of household WEEE continue to be fulfilled and that all reasonable steps are being taken to maintain collections from local authority sites;
  • consider appropriate regulatory or enforcement intervention where those obligations are not being adequately met;
  • coordinate urgently with PCSs, treatment operators and the wider waste sector to identify additional short-term collection, storage and treatment capacity;
  • ensure that local authorities are not left bearing additional storage, handling, transport or other costs arising from a national producer-responsibility system over which they have limited control;
  • provide councils with clear national guidance on how they should manage circumstances where permitted storage capacity is reached because downstream collections have failed; and
  • undertake a wider review of the resilience and treatment capacity of the cooling-appliance recycling system so that similar disruption can be prevented in future.

There is also an important question of fairness. Residents should not ultimately be required, through local taxation or additional council charges, to meet costs arising because the producer responsibility system has been unable to provide sufficient collection and treatment capacity.

Gloucestershire County Council will continue working constructively with our contractors and partners and will restore acceptance of cooling appliances at our Household Recycling Centres as soon as sufficient capacity becomes available for us to do so safely.

However, the scale and geographical extent of the present disruption demonstrate that a coordinated national response is now required. We would therefore be grateful if Defra, under your leadership, could intervene urgently and set out what action the Government intends to take with PCSs and the treatment sector to restore normal collections and secure sufficient capacity.

We would also welcome an early discussion between Defra, NAWDO and affected waste disposal authorities about both the immediate response and the measures needed to strengthen the resilience of the system in the longer term.

I look forward to your response. 

Yours sincerely,

Cllr Ashley Bowkett

Cabinet Member for Nature, Climate & Waste Reduction

Cc:  Cllr Lisa Spivey
Leader, Gloucestershire County Council

Cc:  Cllr Colin Hay
Deputy Leader, Gloucestershire County Council