There is a drawer in most British homes. It contains two dead phones, a tangle of chargers for devices long gone, a tablet with a swollen battery, and a laptop that was working fine when it was put in there four years ago.
Collectively, that drawer is a national problem — and, increasingly, a national embarrassment.
The numbers
The UN’s Global E-waste Monitor found the world generated 62 million tonnes of electronic waste in 2022 — a record — of which only 22.3% was documented as properly collected and recycled. E-waste is growing roughly five times faster than formal recycling capacity, and is on track to reach 82 million tonnes a year by 2030.
The UK’s position in this is not a good one. Britain generates around 24kg of electronic waste per person per year, placing it second in the world behind Norway. And the campaign group Material Focus estimates that over 155,000 tonnes of electrical items are thrown into general household bins in the UK each year — not recycled, not collected, just binned.
Why binning electronics is worse than binning most things
Two reasons, pulling in opposite directions but both bad.
What goes in is valuable. The UN put the recoverable materials in a single year’s global e-waste at around US$62 billion — gold, copper, silver, palladium, aluminium, rare earth elements. There is more gold in a tonne of discarded circuit boards than in a tonne of ore from most gold mines. Every gram thrown away is a gram that has to be mined again somewhere else, with all the environmental and human cost that involves.
What leaks out is harmful. Electronics contain lead, mercury, cadmium, brominated flame retardants and, in older screens, other persistent pollutants. In landfill these leach. Where e-waste is exported and informally processed, boards are burned in the open to recover copper — releasing dioxins over the people doing the work. Lithium batteries add a more immediate hazard: crushed in a bin lorry or at a sorting facility, they start fires. UK waste operators now report thousands of battery-related fires a year.
The order of preference
Recycling is the option people reach for first, and it should actually be near the bottom of the list. The waste hierarchy is not a slogan — it is a genuine ranking by environmental benefit.
- Keep using it. The best outcome by a wide margin. A laptop that feels slow can often be transformed for under £50 with an SSD, a RAM upgrade or a lighter operating system.
- Pass it on to be used. Sell it, give it to a family member, or donate it. Every working machine that finds a second user displaces a new one being manufactured — and manufacturing is where the bulk of a laptop’s environmental cost sits.
- Let it be broken for parts. A laptop with a smashed screen still holds a good drive, working RAM, a healthy battery and a serviceable keyboard, all of which keep other machines running.
- Recycle it properly. Materials recovery, but with the manufacturing energy lost for good. Better than the bin by a long way, and worse than the three options above.
- The general waste bin. Never. It is also, for most electricals, contrary to WEEE regulations.
Your options in the UK, practically
The WEEE Regulations put obligations on retailers, and most people have no idea what they are entitled to.
- Retailer takeback. Larger electrical retailers must offer to take your old equivalent item when you buy a new one, free of charge. Many will take small items regardless of whether you buy anything.
- Household waste recycling centres. Every local authority provides WEEE collection. Free at the point of use.
- Kerbside collections. A growing number of councils now collect small electricals and batteries from the doorstep. Worth checking yours.
- Reuse organisations and charities. Several schemes refurbish donated computers for families without one. Digital exclusion is a real problem and your old laptop is a direct fix for it.
- Sell it. Working business laptops have genuine resale value, often more than people expect.
Before it leaves your hands: wipe it properly
Whichever route you choose, deal with the data first. Deleting files does not remove them and neither does a quick format — the data stays recoverable until it is overwritten or the encryption key is destroyed.
On a modern Windows machine, “Reset this PC” with the “remove everything” and “clean the drive” options is adequate for domestic use. On a Mac, erase the volume from Recovery. If the drive holds anything sensitive — business records, client information, financial documents — use a proper erasure tool or have it done by someone who will certify it. And sign out of your accounts and deactivate any device-locked licences before you wipe, or you will spend an afternoon on the phone getting them released.
What we do with them
Our whole business is the second and third rungs of that ladder. Machines come to us from businesses refreshing their fleets, they get erased, tested, repaired where needed and put back into service with someone who needs a computer. What genuinely cannot be saved gets stripped for parts, and only what is left after that goes for materials recovery.
If you have a laptop sitting in a drawer, it is worth ten minutes of your time to find out whether it still has a life in it. Message us with the make and model and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth reviving, worth selling, or genuinely finished — and if it is finished, where to take it.
Sources
- UNITAR / ITU, Global E-waste Monitor 2024
- Material Focus, UK electrical waste research
- UK WEEE Regulations 2013