Steve: on a mission to sort and save old electricals from landfill

“It feels criminal to chuck them in landfill.”

“I keep this little lot hidden under our bed in what I secretly think of as the Box of Shame & Guilt,” says Steve Tooze, revealing an assortment of electrical bits and pieces that would be familiar to millions of householders up and down the country. 

“Defunct laptops, ancient broken feature phones, power and connector cables for long-gone electronic devices.” 

These are things Steve has accumulated over the past decade – he reckons he has dozens of unused electricals gathering dust under the bed.

Precious resources

We’ve all been there – or most of us. UK homes are holding on to some 527 million old electrical items, worth an estimated £17 billion on the second-hand market, according to recent research.

“I honestly have no idea what to do with them. It feels criminal to simply chuck them in a bin to end up in landfill,” says Steve.

That’s one reason he would like to see a lot more effort going into reusing the precious materials contained in electricals hidden away in our homes – especially, he says “when we hear about companies and governments scouring the globe to find fresh sources of rare materials for smartphones.”

Local solutions

Thankfully, it’s getting easier than ever to reuse or recycle your old electricals.

With thousands of electrical reuse and recycling points around the UK, and thousands more retailers now offering to take back your old devices in-store, there’s never been a better time to make sure your old gadgets bow out gracefully.

Find your nearest recycling point using our postcode locator.