Recycling Is on the Increase in the Czech Republic, As Confirmed by Survey

Survey 2008 - How Czech households are handling waste electrical and electronic equipment

The most common household appliance is refrigerator. The survey confirmed that almost everybody has some:

• 99 % of Czech households own one refrigerator at least
• 50 % of refrigerators are older than 5 years
• 55 % of Czech households buy a new refrigerator once in 6 to 10 years

When the refrigerator must be disposed of because it is past service or just because the time has come to replace it with a more recent and more efficient model,

• 34% of households leave it at a collection point.
• 24% of households replace it for a new one at the retail outlet.
• 13 % give the old functional refrigerator to somebody else.
• 8 % sell it to a second-hand store or through an advertisement
• Another 8 % continue to use the appliance in some way.
• However, there are still 6% of respondents admitting that they just put the old refrigerator beside the dustbin.

Let’s look at hair dryers and hot combs for comparison:

• 83 % of Czech households have some, of which 56% are 3 to 5 years old.
• When they are replaced in the end, 65% of replacements are due to malfunction and only 25% due to purchase of a new, advanced model.
• Sad to say, the largest portion, 44%, of these small household appliances ends up in dustbins, together with other waste.
• only 13 % of hair dryers and hot combs are left at collection points.

The survey brought many other interesting pieces of knowledge.

The respondents were asked to specify the maximum distance they are willing to go to turn in old appliances.

• it was 1633 m in average for small appliances and
• 2110 for the large ones.

However, Czech household has in average 2758 m to the nearest electric shop and 3012 m to the nearest collection point where the old household appliances can be got rid of free of charge.

This is where experts see the last remaining weak point of the whole take-back scheme. The collective schemes are enhancing the network of collecting points continually, making it increasingly dense, with you being able to dispose of your old appliances in an ecological manner and free of charge; however, the barrier, which is mostly a psychological one, has not yet been overcome. In fact, it is not much more difficult now to get rid of an old iron than of an empty PET bottle.

Two Years Made a Difference

Three years ago, when the take-back scheme for end-of-life appliances was introduced, most people distinguished only two types of appliances: those that fit into a dustbin and those that do not.

The survey repeated after two years indicated great changes in people’s mind generally.

• Nowadays, 72% of respondents agree with the statement “Thanks to the take-back scheme, there are no old appliances abandoned in ditches and landfills.”
• The term “take-back of electrical equipment” brings to the minds of more than half of the respondents, more exactly 53% of them, “turning in the old appliance to the retailer when buying a new one.”

The comparison of the result of this year’s survey with that of 2006 suggests that at the beginning only 51% of respondents passed the take-back scheme knowledge test. This year it was as many as 68 %.