Business
‘The Fraud of Advanced Recycling’
Big Oil and the plastics industry’s public claims about ‘advanced recycling’ are undermined by their own words and experts
13 May 2025
Ongoing national processing issues mean many people will be unable to recycle fridge and freezers this Bank Holiday weekend.
Councils are calling for recycling schemes to get back on track as discarded appliances pile up at recycling centres, the Local Government Association has said.
Councils are working hard to ensure residents who want to do the right thing can continue to bring old and broken appliances in for recycling. However, their ability to provide this service is being threatened by a national shortage of specialist processing capacity that is entirely beyond their control – with a significant backlog emerging nationally.
Fridges and freezers are more likely to fail during hot weather, with the recent heatwaves likely exacerbating this issue, increasing the number that need to be collected and recycled.
Councils up and down the country are now securing costly temporary storage, asking residents to delay disposing of appliances or warning that they may have to stop accepting them as sites reach their safe capacity.
LGA research has identified dozens of councils which have already been forced to stop or restrict fridge and freezer collections, with more expected to be affected as the disruption continues.
The disruption follows the closure of specialist treatment facilities and a wider shortage of capacity to process fridges, freezers and other cooling appliances.
Some producer compliance schemes, which arrange and fund the collection and recycling of electrical waste on behalf of manufacturers, have consequently delayed or stopped collections from council sites.
Councils want to keep services available and avoid passing the disruption on to residents, but the LGA says ‘they cannot be expected to store growing stockpiles indefinitely or use taxpayers’ money to cover failures in a producer-funded recycling system’. Instead, councils are calling for producers to pay for the additional costs.
‘The backlog of defunct white goods is getting bigger by the day – they’re at risk of becoming a mountain.
‘It is not right that residents who are trying to do the right thing can’t take old or broken appliances to their local recycling centre due to failures elsewhere in the system.
‘Councils are working hard to keep services running, but it is deeply unfair to expect them to pay to store growing stockpiles or pass disruption on to residents.
‘Producers must urgently get collections back on track and cover every additional cost councils face. The government must ensure they meet their responsibilities and put proper contingency arrangements in place.’
CLLR AROOJ SHAH
Chair of the LGA’s Neighbourhoods Committee
Under the producer responsibility system for waste electrical and electronic equipment, producers are responsible for financing the collection, treatment, recovery and environmentally sound disposal of household electrical waste through their compliance schemes.
The LGA said producers and their compliance schemes must immediately restore reliable collections, fund alternative treatment or temporary storage where necessary and reimburse councils in full for the additional storage, staffing, transport and management costs caused by the disruption.
It is also calling on the government to ensure producers meet these responsibilities and work with the industry to establish robust contingency arrangements, so residents and councils are not left exposed whenever processing capacity is disrupted.
The LGA is calling on the government to take urgent action, including producer-funded interim storage and treatment, a clear mechanism to reimburse councils for unavoidable additional costs and stronger contingency arrangements to prevent future disruption.
Big Oil and the plastics industry’s public claims about ‘advanced recycling’ are undermined by their own words and experts
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