Alternatives to recycling your old electronic products
Yesterday we looked at how to recycle old electronic goods. Before you rush off to the local recycling facility with your old freezers, CD players or CRT TVs, take a minute to think if anyone else could still get some use out of them.
Three million children live in UK households that cannot afford to replace broken electrical items. If your electrical goods haven’t reached the end of their useful life, but you don’t fancy the effort involved in putting them up on ebay, here are some alternative ways to get them to people who really need them.
Furniture Re-use Organisations
The Furniture Re-use Network is a group of charities that collect old furniture and home appliances and pass them on to families who badly need them but can’t afford to buy new. Every year FRN collects, repairs and redistributes over 250,000 kitchen appliances, including 45,000 fridges. Many groups also accept smaller electrical goods like kettles, toasters, stereos, TVs and vacuum cleaners.
All items have to be in good working order. Go to the FRN site to find out more and locate your local Furniture Re-use Organisation
Freecycle
Ebay is a popular option, but if you don’t fancy the time and effort involved, there are free alternatives that make sure the things you don’t want go to people who do. The most popular are the Freecycle Network and Recycle.co.uk.
These groups let you post details of the items you want to get rid of, and people who want to take them get in touch and offer to come and pick them up. You may be surprised what people want - Katie Lee, who blogs on the Telegraph newspaper website, found people were only too eager to snap up her old mobiles and PDAs.
Charity Shops
Charity shops sometimes accept some types of electrical items, but this really varies from shop to shop. Before you make a wasted journey down to your local shop, check which shops will take which items at the Association for Charity Shops store locator.
Have we missed anything out? If you know of any one else putting old gadgetry or appliances to good use, let us know in the comments.
Tags: charity, donate, ebay, freecycle, reuse
Blog posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 9:19 am under Computers, Environment, Green, HiFi systems, Kettles, Microwaves, Ovens, Televisions, Vacuum cleaners, Washing machines. Leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
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