The Government has announced plans to change how your consumers dispose of their unwanted electrical equipment; which it stated will ensure “retailers can turn old goods into new wares”.

It reported that an estimated 155,000 tonnes of smaller household electricals such as cables, toasters, kettles and power tools are wrongly thrown in the bin,  households are thought to be hoarding a further 527 million unwanted electrical items containing precious metals.

Recycling Minister, Robbie Moore, said: “Every year millions of household electricals across the UK end up in the bin rather than being correctly recycled or reused. This is a sheer waste of our natural resources and has to stop.

“We all have a drawer of old tech somewhere that we don’t know what to do with and our proposals will ensure these gadgets are easy to dispose of without the need for a trip to your local tip. Our plans will also drive the move to a circular economy and create new jobs by making all recycling simpler.”

The proposals included:

  • UK-wide collections of waste electricals directly from households – saving the public from having to trek to distant electrical disposal points. The collections would be financed by producers of electrical items, not the taxpayer, and not necessarily require any further bins.
  • Large retailers rolling out collection drop points for electrical items in-store, free of charge, without the need to buy a replacement product.
  • Retailers and online sellers taking a responsibility for collecting unwanted or broken large electrical items such as fridges or cookers when delivering a replacement.

Rob Sant, Managing Director of AO.com’s electrical recycling operations, said: “We’re the only UK electricals retailer with its own fridge recycling plant, having invested over £20m in our mission to make new appliances out of old ones through our facilities. We recycle a fifth of all the fridges that are thrown away each year and, since we opened it in 2017, we’ve recycled or reused over seven million large appliances.

“Being both a retailer and a recycler gives us a unique perspective to input to this consultation on the practicalities for our industry, driving higher standards and making it easier for customers to recycle more electrical waste.”