The managing director at a Greater Manchester mercury company, said that the government has not been doing its part to encourage businesses to recycle fluorescent lamp tubes. According to industry insiders, failure to encourage such recycling habits by government and private schemes has resulted in mercury falling.
Bryan Neill, AIM-listed Mercury Recycling’s managing director, stated that his company lost profits last year by almost a third, from £534,000 to £333,000. The reason, according to him, is that government and compliance scheme organisers had failed to raise awareness about this type of recycling. He added that more could be done saying that out of 200 million lights and tubes which were purchased last year in the UK, only 30 million were recycled.
However, the company is looking to the government’s new battery directive for hope. Introduced at the beginning of this year, the directive sets goals for battery recycling, which Mercury Recycling has recently branched out into.
Mr Neill commented, however, that out of the 45,000 tonnes of batteries that sold in the UK last year, only three per cent were recycled. The new directive operates as a compliance scheme, so companies will be forced to join. Targets for the scheme will see battery recycling increase by 10 per cent at the close of this year, and another 25 per cent by 2012.
Mr Neill also added that the company had been poorly affected by the harsh winter and the large quantities of snow. Eight of the company’s HGVs were halted during the heaviest snow periods in the UK.
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