This week I am recycling electrical waste. As I have masses to do, and am planning a simultaneous clear out of the kitchen, I’ve called in a pro to help me today – Birgit Medele of Clear of Clutter has helped me out before when I was drowning in a sea of junk/files/toys, and has a brilliant way of systematically sorting through things.
I thoroughly recommend getting a Universal battery tester – mine cost £3 on Amazon and has worked a treat. So far we have cleared three cupboards, filled one box with donations (mostly kitchenware – I had two potato mashers and four corkscrews!) for the charity shop, filled one box with recycled paper/glass/aluminium and sorted out one box of live batteries (about 20) and one box of about 15 to be safely disposed of, using my fabulous new gadget. It’s very satisfying not having batteries sitting around which may or may not work. I am going to switch to using rechargeable batteries when possible, buy a charger and keep trying to buy non-battery gadgets but I’ll use these up first!
We also have sorted out 8 used print cartridges and one very ancient Nokia mobile phone which are going to go into charity freepost bags (order them for free from Recycle4Charity and donate to the charity of your choice). Each cartridge will raise £1 and the phone can raise up to £30! I am going to sell any other phones I find on Ebay if possible as well but plan to donate 10% to charity for each sale – easily done using Ebay’s “sell for charity” option. People forget that a lot of the junk sitting around in their houses can be donated to charity or sold and turned into cash for yourself or for others. Mobile phones in particular are highly toxic to the environment and should never be thrown away in household waste: always donate to charity, recycle or sell it on.
Here’s a link that was sent to me recently which might be of interest to companies working out how to dispose of waste:
Waste disposal
Waste Collection is an online retailer providing waste management products and services to companies.