About Recolight.

Established by the lighting industry in 2005, in accordance with the WEEE Regulations, Recolight is a not for profit company funded by its members to provide a waste lamp collection and recycling service. In the two years to June 2009, Recolight funded the collection and recycling of over 50 million Gas Discharge Lamps, helping to prevent nearly a fifth of a tonne of mercury from entering landfill.

Recolight also provides a range of free services to businesses to make lamp recycling as simple and efficient as possible. Approximately one third of the existing Recolight collection points are open, providing collection to anyone.

The WEEE Regulations require Producers of Electrical and Electronic Equipment and their Compliance schemes to finance and put systems in place to ensure the treatment (including recycling) of separately collected WEEE. The UK Lamp industry aims to meet the obligations of Producers of Gas Discharge Lamps through its industry-led Compliance Scheme - Recolight.

We received scheme operator approval on 21st February 2007 and went live operationally on July 2nd 2007. Through us, the lamp industry alone has been responsible for collecting and recycling more items of WEEE than any other sector in the last two years. In 2009, we funded the recycling of over 25 million lamps.

We carried out research into consumer attitudes about recycling. Consumers told us that to increase recycling rates, we need to make collection easier. 200 Bulbstore Maxi containers are already located at Sainsbury’s stores across the UK. But we still need more to get recycling rates up. The Bulbstore Mini and our partnership with CoBRA has been designed to optimise the collection of CFLs in communities throughout the UK as CoBRA has proved to be one of the most environmentally efficient ways of achieving our mutual goals.

About Mark David Hatwood - Co Creator of the CoBRA Scheme..

From the age of 19, Mark David Hatwood spent 25 years in the music industry, first as musician and musical director, and later as in-house songwriter for BMG (Bertelsmann Music Group). In 2002, he wrote his first novel and screenplay and continues to write novels and screenplays to this day (more about his background can be found here.)

Having lived in Germany for 12 years, Mark became impressed with the European’s consciousness for recycling and energy efficiency and on returning to the UK in 2004, felt inspired to become a founder member of his local Transition group – a growing network of towns in the UK (and throughout the world) that are a members of the Transition Towns movement; striving to develop a higher standard of living and an environmentally friendly future for all.

In 2007, Mark created the CoBRA Scheme and is now helping councils to adapt this multi award winning scheme to undertake many different environmental demands. (More about his multi award winning battery recycling scheme can be found here.)

In 2009 Mark was offered an unconditional fellowship of the RSA(TheRSA.org) for his environmental achievements.

To see a video case study on Mark's work by Business Link South West, please click here. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________