A recent study published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has found that more than half of UK households have at least one unused electrical item, with no plans to recycle because of a lack of knowledge about where to recycle, and data protection. But holding onto your electrical items, when they can no longer be used, is not a great idea! Electrical items are made from a range of precious metals, that are becoming increasingly valuable, and increasingly difficult to mine. This means that in the future, we will be relying on recycled pieces and metals from old electronic equipment, to power new ones. And with new recycling techniques being researched and analysed, there has never been a better time to recycle your WEEE waste.
Just give us a call, here at X-Met Metals, and we can collect, weigh and pay for your WEEE waste all at the same time, at a location, time and date to suit you.
Householder hoarding: the stats
The study by the RSC has found some fascinating statistics regarding unused electrical items. These include:
- 51% of households have at least one unused electronic device
- 45% of households have up to 5 unused electronic devices
- 82% of these have NO plans to recycle at all
Most of the barriers to recycling included a lack of knowledge about where to go, and concerns for data security.
Recycling WEEE waste
Robert Parker, chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said:
“Chemical scientists are already working to find ground-breaking solutions – by investigating long-term substitutes for rare elements in devices, or by finding new chemical methods to extract precious materials and reuse them – but we all can and must do more.
“As individuals, reuse and recycling are the best options available to us, but even if recycled it is still extremely difficult to recover some of these elements from unused devices.”
“We need action now – from governments, manufacturers and retailers – to make reuse and recycling much easier, and we must enable a new generation of chemistry talent to help. The UK has a tremendous opportunity to become a world leader in this and set an example for other nations to follow.”
Commenting on the research Mark Burrows-Smith, chief executive of the producer compliance scheme REPIC, said:
“The RSC report further confirms the research reported by REPIC in our 2018 survey. Information and awareness are key to educating the public to understand the important role we all need to play in responsibly recycling our e-waste. Establishing new recycling habits to capture the many types of waste electrical and electronic products needs to be a priority.”
“We hope news about the findings from the RSC’s research will encourage more UK consumers to recycle any old gadgets currently stored in their homes, so that any valuable and critical raw materials they might contain can be captured for recycling.”
Recycle your WEEE waste with X-Met Metals
Here at X-Met Metals, we can collect your WEEE waste from wherever you are, around the North West, including Wigan, Blackburn, Chorley, Manchester and Liverpool. Why not give us a call today?