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Does your unwanted tech 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.
Small electricals that are cheap to buy and easy to throw away are becoming the fastest growing e-waste stream. Here’s why we need to put the brakes on FastTech going to landfill.
The hard reality of easy-come easy-go electricals
From mini-fans, disposable vapes and USB sticks to novelty chargers, decorative lights and handheld vacuum cleaners – we buy 16 items of FastTech in the UK every second, and bin 90% of those gadgets in the blink of an eye.
All electricals, even small inexpensive items such as cables, contain precious materials – and if we bin them they’re lost forever. That’s a big challenge for the environment and our economy.
An astonishing 471 million pieces of FastTech end up in UK landfill each year. They’re part of over 100,000 tonnes of e-waste we throw away annually, and we still have a staggering 880 million gadgets gathering dust at home.
Like anything else with a plug, battery or cable, FastTech can be recycled. And more and more people are discovering how easy it is to donate or recycle theirs. Find your nearest drop-off point using our handy locator.
Once you’ve decided whether to recycle or pass on your unwanted tech, preparing your electricals is as easy as ABC
Does your unwanted tech 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.
Find a bag 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 our easy recycling locator to find your nearest repair, reuse or recycling point. Some councils collect directly from your home.
Electrical recycling locatorWATCH THIS
Whether it’s disposable vapes or swanky noise-cancelling headphones – inside all electrical devices are valuable, unseen materials that make them tick.
Now eye-popping 3D scans by visual tech pioneers Lumafield reveal the treasure in our gadgets: copper, lithium, stainless steel, gold and more. By recycling anything with a plug, battery or cable we can recover these materials and turn them into new products – from bicycles to life-saving medical equipment.
Some of the FastTech items most likely to be binned include mini speakers, handheld vacuum cleaners and fans, novelty fairy lights and step counters.
There were almost half a billion (471 million) FastTech products sent to landfill last year – we estimate these included 260 million disposable vapes, 26 million cables (enough to go round the Earth five times), 29 million LED, solar and decorative lights, 9.8 million USB sticks, and 4.8 million mini fans. That’s a lot of precious resources going to waste, that could have been recycled into something new.
With bells on. FastTech is rivalling Fast Fashion and is causing similar headaches. As with Fast Fashion, people buy small, relatively cheap items (£4 on average per electrical item) that can be seen as ‘disposable’.
Even low-cost electricals contain precious materials and should never be binned. Shockingly, even more FastTech is soon thrown away (90% of the items we buy) than Fast Fashion (30%).
So, just as the trend for recycling and repurposing fashion has grown and grown, we can also get more and more people recycling FastTech, guilt- and fuss-free. Find your nearest reuse and recycling drop-off point using our handy locator.
Anything with a plug, battery or cable can be donated, repaired or recycled. And with more than 22,000 electrical recycling drop-off points around the UK, finding one near you has never been easier – check our handy online locator for your nearest.
Think about making yourself some money or making someone else happy: donate your unwanted tech to charity, sell it or bag it up and recycle. Whatever you do, don’t throw electricals in the bin or shove them in a cupboard and forget about them.
