During November and December Residents of Bath and North East Somerset can collect BetterPoints for leaving their surplus electrical items out at the kerbside with their other recycling. The kerbside collection allows people who had previously not recycled e-waste to join the challenge and recycle electrical waste – including residents who don’t have access to a car or for a range of other reasons find it difficult or inconvenient to visit recycling centres.
On collecting the items at the kerbside, the refuse collector leaves a flyer in the resident’s recycling bin. The resident can scan this to the BetterPoints app and receive a BetterTicket – giving them a chance to win £50 worth of BetterPoints which can be exchanged for vouchers or donated to charity. The main residents’ BetterRecycle challenge has been running since August and has attracted local press coverage including a launch news item and information about the kerbside collections as well as mentions in a number of local community newsletters.
In the challenge residents are rewarded for scanning and recycling e-waste at one of the council recycling centres and for taking items to one of the Share and Repair Cafes.Over the course of the last few months users have tracked the recycling of 224 electrical items. Nine of the people involved reported that they’d previously never recycled e-waste, demonstrating behaviour change. So far there have been 13 prize draw winners. As part of these we’ve given away 28,000 BetterPoints worth £280!
Shahid, who lives in Bath, told us, "I heard about BetterRecycle from the poster at the Recycling Centre. So, on my next trip I took a broken printer and TV, registered and scanned in. It’s a great scheme to nudge people to help the environment. It’s really important that we try to do things a bit differently for the future of our planet."
