A message of caution has been issued over the accumulation of broken fridges at recycling centres amid a lack of council storage.

The Local Government Association (LGA) has said that many will be prevented from recycling fridges and freezers over the bank holiday weekend due to ‘ongoing national processing issues’.

It warned that appliances continue to ‘pile up at recycling centres’, as councils are being forced to use expensive temporary storage in the meantime.

The LGA highlighted the ‘significant backlog’ that has been compounded by recent heatwaves, as fridges and freezers are more prone to breaking in hotter temperatures.

Councils have asked residents to postpone their disposal of items, as well as confirming that they could have to restrict or refuse appliances due to sites being at their limits. Producer compliance schemes have also delayed or ended collections from council sites in some cases.

The LGA has argued that councils ‘cannot be expected to store growing stockpiles indefinitely or use taxpayers’ money to cover failures in a producer-funded recycling system’. As a result, local authorities have urged producers to fund the extra costs they are facing.

As part of its recommendations, the LGA has requested that producers and their compliance schemes must reimplement reliable collections ‘immediately’, as well as funding alternative treatment or temporary storage and compensating councils for the ‘additional storage, staffing, transport and management costs caused by the disruption’.

Furthermore, it has called on the Government to hold producers accountable for their responsibilities and to take ‘urgent action’ such as delivering producer-funded interim storage and treatment, a mechanism to ensure councils are reimbursed, and improved contingency arrangements.

Comments

Cllr Arooj Shah, Chair of the LGA’s Neighbourhoods Committee, said: ‘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.’

A Defra spokesperson commented: ‘Our priority is to minimise disruption to household collection or proper disposal of fridges and other cooling equipment, and we are pushing producers of these items to take all necessary steps to achieve this and resolve any collection delays.’

‘We appreciate the challenges currently facing local authorities, and are working closely with the Environment Agency, industry and local authority stakeholders to manage the impact of treatment capacity shortages. This includes allowing the storage of fridge and cooling equipment on temporary sites provided certain conditions set out by the Environment Agency are met.’