First Mile

Bruce Bratley and his company, First Mile, have lofty aspirations: "We want to get every SME [small and medium enterprise] in London recycling by 2010." He admits that such a goal "might sound like a tall order", but is confident that it will be "easy with First Mile's services".

And it's not just the standard paper, plastic, glass and cardboard that the company hopes to get SMEs recycling (although it collects all of the above), but also the more complicated (and tedious) batteries and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). First Mile is the first UK organisation to offer a recycling collection service for WEEE and its efforts will doubtless go a long way towards diverting fizzled-out air conditioners, run-down refrigerators and worn-out washing machines from landfill.

First Mile started trading in May 2004 to fill a gap in London's recycling market: "We wanted to get small and medium businesses recycling. These are businesses who'd found it impossible to recycle previously," explains Bratley, who has seen it grow as a service no covering more than 3,500 London businesses.

About 200 of those businesses are using First Mile's new WEEE collection service. The scheme was made possible by a £95,000 grant from Enhance Capital Fund, a support service for London's green enterprises. Enhance's funding allowed First Mile to procure three new collection vehicles, develop its IT system and tracking equipment to manage logistics and minimise vehicle movements and hire 15 more employees, bringing the company total to 50.

Bratley explains that the idea for the scheme came about in response to the WEEE Directive's somewhat confusing regulations, which, in some instances, give end users the responsibility for recycling WEEE: "the Waste Electronics Directive is quite complicated for SMEs to understand", but, by contrast, the First Mile collection system is a "dead simple way for people to comply with the law" and get rid of end-of-life products.

Indeed, the service is quite straightforward. First Mile provides London businesses with WEEE recycling sacks and stickers for £25 each (excluding VAT) and all the companies have to do is stuff the 25-kilogram, heavy-duty bags with as many laptops, phones, fans, fryers, radios, et cetera as will fit or slap a sticker on those bulky freezers or washing machines and call First Mile to arrange for a pickup from the office premises the next day.

All electronic and electrical devices apart from fluorescent light tubes are accepted and, once enough is collected, First Mile sends it all down to SWEEEP (Specialist WEEE Processing), an Authorised Treatment Facility in Kent, where equipment is disintegrated into its base materials and remarketed. To date, First Mile has sent 25 tonnes of WEEE, most of it IT equipment, for reprocessing.

At the moment, all the WEEE First Mile collects is sent for recycling and, sadly, none of it is reused. Bratley says arranging for items to be refurbished has been more difficult than anticipated: "We're finding that with SMEs, computers and other equipment tend to be used a lot more than they would be at companies like Deutsche Bank. So, equipment is often quite worn down and not suitable for reuse." Nevertheless, the company is looking to find ways to facilitate the reuse of equipment that still has life left in it.

According to Bratley, the WEEE collection service is very popular with London's SMEs: now, when companies have clearouts and upgrade their systems, they can get rid of old equipment straightaway rather than consigning it to gather dust in a store room for an indefinite period.

But it's not just London SMEs that can take advantage of this and the other recycling services First Mile offers: the company currently operates in Birmingham and SMEs in Bristol and Leeds will soon find the business in their cities, as well. In fact SMEs in cities all over the UK can look forward to a time in the not-too-distant future when they can get rid of WEEE simply by filling a bag and making a phone call: Bratley claims First Mile is "building a platform to roll out to all cities in the UK by 2012." And it doesn't sound like such a lofty, impossible aspiration after examining the company's services and successes thus far...