There are many benefits to recycling your old electronics – also known as e-waste, electronic waste and WEEE.
Discarded electricals are one of the fastest growing sources of waste – and a big threat to the environment and human health. Recycling old electronics is better for the planet and your pocket, putting valuable resources back into the economy.
Recycling equals a cleaner environment. If we recycled all our old electricals we would cut as much CO2 as taking 3.8 million cars off the road.
Each year, more than £850 million of precious metals could be salvaged from our old electricals – including enough gold to make more than 850,000 rings.
Recycling our old electricals would create hundreds of new jobs in electrical reuse and recycling – and save valuable raw materials like gold, copper and steel.
The average UK household could make £1300 from selling their unwanted electricals – imagine all that extra cash and shelf space!
Find out how singer Nicola Roberts came to wear a dress made from 315 metres of household wires.
How Megan took the hassle out of recycling old gadgets
‘My old games console stopped working – so did the hair dryer. I didn’t want to throw them away, but recycling seemed such a pain. Then a friend said why not collect them all up in a bag? Now we just put old electricals in a separate carrier bag until it’s full enough (for my dad) to take to the recycling centre. Simple as that.’
We could save a whopping 2.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions if we recycled all our small unwanted electricals instead of binning or holding on to them. That’s like taking more than a million cars off the road.
