Love your electricals?

Date:  28 June 2010

Three Rivers ‘electrical lovers’ are urged to let their unwanted technology and gadgets!

You are already able to recycle everyday items such as newspapers, glass, cans and plastic bottles, but more can still be done!

Small electrical items can also be reused or recycled. This means anything with a battery or plug; from broken toasters and kettles gathering dust in the loft, to old mobile phones in drawers, and disused power tools cluttering up the garage. Old and unused electrical items can become useful again.

Councillor Phil Brading, TRDC Executive Member for Public Services & Health, and Vice-Chairman of the Herts Waste Partnership, said:

'It’s so important to recycle, reduce or reuse the waste we generate. This year, why not give your old electricals a new lease of life by being recycled into something new, or being donated to charity and going on to find a new home?'

On average we accumulate three new electrical items each year, that’s over 173 million nationally. But only one in five of these get recycled. Much-loved items that become disused after an upgrade can often be put to good use by someone else or can be broken down into components, by recycling the valuable materials, which helps to preserve our natural resources.

How to declutter your e-clutter

• If your item has a mains cable or uses replaceable batteries or needs charging, then you can recycle it. Look out for the crossed-out wheelie bin logo on it too.
• For old or broken small electricals, the best thing is to take it to your local Household Waste Recycling Centre, visit www.wasteaware.org.uk to find your nearest centre.
• If your item still works, consider donating it to a reuse project. You can even recycle some small electricals by post; you never know you could even receive some cash in return!

Small electricals: fast facts from Recycle Now

• Three quarters of us admit to having at least one old or unused electrical item in our house, with one in 10 hoarding five or more of these items
• Only a 1/3  of people (35 per cent) believe electrical goods can be recycled
• More than a third of people (35 per cent) say they don’t know where to take electricals to be recycled
• 83 per cent would make more of an effort to recycle electricals in the future having been made aware they could
• Amazingly enough, some of us still have unused electricals from the 60s and 70s in our homes including original stylophones, lava lamps and the trusty teasmaid.
• For every 7kg of small electricals bought last year – the average amount per person – only a fraction (1.3kg) was sent to be recycled.