ASK
Does your old electrical contain batteries or bulbs? Remove these before recycling. It’s your responsibility to remove personal data from smart devices and computers, so remember to take out memory cards and delete your data.
Back up photos and videos from SD cards, mobiles and computers
You’re constantly creating content on your phone, camera and laptop. Here’s how to back it up.
SD cards
SD cards are designed to work for at least 10 years, but might last 5 years or less. So back up the important stuff from the SD cards in your camera, voice recorder or phone. You can do this by transferring files to your computer (see this guide) and from there to any other storage solution such as an external drive or the cloud. See this, specifically about Google storage, and this about apps for backing up photos online.
Mobile devices
You’re bound to be storing (too many) photos, videos, voice notes and more on your mobile phone or tablet. So make yourself a copy of the stuff that matters. See Apple’s article on how to back up content from an iPhone, and here’s a video guide to iPhone back-up. If you’re on Android, see this article or this video.
And before passing on any digital device make sure you delete your data.
Computer files
You can back up and store photos, videos, music and documents, as well as system and application files, using external hard drives or online storage. The consensus is that to be really safe you should back up your data in three places. Here’s a guide for Mac users, and one for PC users.
Content saved? Time to recycle your gadgets
Preparing your electricals for recycling is as easy as ABC
BAG IT
Find a bag or box that you can use to store all your old electricals until you can go to the recycling centre – or until collection day if you have one.
CHECK
Check our easy recycling locator to find your nearest repair, reuse or recycling point.
Recycling locator
HypnoCat says
One good turn deserves another and another
Humans! Did you know valuable metals like gold, silver and aluminium in your unwanted electricals can be recycled and used over and over and over again?
That’s purrrfect reproduction.
