Old tech doesn’t have to go in the bin – there’s plenty of ways you can recycle your Iphones , tablets and more
All of us have tech items that are a combination of plastic and metal. You will never be able to seperate it all yourself in order to recycle it, so it’s tempting to either leave it gathering dust in your bottom drawer or even throw it away in a general waste bin.
Zena Turner, a music teacher from Northampton approached canvas & glass with this issue. She said that in her family they have a lot of tech items that she has no idea what to do with when they break.
She said: “It does prey on my mind what is going to happen to them all when they wear out. Not to mention the multiple charging units we go through because they just seem to break so often!”
Not to worry! In the UK there are several easy options for recycling your old tech items to make sure they don’t end up in a landfill somewhere!
Recycle it
Recycling at a certified recycling centre is a great option for miscellaneous tech, from old chargers and cables to microwaves and televisions.
Recycle Now, the national recycling campaign for England, can help you find places nearby to find out who will take your tech. Go to their Recycling Locator, enter your location and select what kind of item you’re looking to recycle, and they will tell you where you can take it to get recycled. This may simply be your local recycling center, or it could be a local business who will take it off your hands.
Send off your tech
You can send off items like phones and tablets to a company such as Mazuma. Even if it is faulty, you can type in the model number of the item you’re looking to get rid of, and see how much you’re likely to get for it.
For example, for a faulty iPhone 6 16GB, you are guaranteed to get at least £15 for it on Mazuma. You then send it to them and they will send you the money.
If you just want someone to take your old kettle off your hands, an EU directive, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE), states that companies who sell electronic gadgets must have a facility for recycling customer’s old gadgets when they buy a new one. When you buy a new kettle, for example, take your old one to the same company and they’ll recycle of it for you.
Make some money
As they say – one man’s trash is another’s treasure! Even though your broken tech might be useless to you, someone else might be able to fix it up and get some use out of it.
If your Macbook suddenly dies one day, even if it is out of warranty it’s still not a piece of junk. Take it to the Apple store, they’ll tell you what’s wrong with it for free. You can then put it on eBay, telling your potential buyers Apple’s verdict. Broken Macbooks can fetch anything from £150 to £600 and more, depending on its condition.
Other brands of laptops may also fetch a pretty penny, but you’ll need to make sure you find out exactly why it died so you can be truthful to your buyers.
