We’ve all been there – buying a new smartphone or tablet only to realize that we still need to buy a power adapter. While company efforts to reduce e-waste have had some impact, a new study from Recycle Your Electricals has revealed the UK alone has enough unused cables to go to the moon and back.
Besides the 627 million unused cables in Britain – or 23 cables per household – an estimated 1.3 billion unused or binned electrics are believed to contain £266 million worth of copper, a valuable resource used across electronics, manufacturing and transportation.
This equates to nearly 38,500 tonnes of copper hidden away inside unwanted and thrown away electricals.
The scale of e-waste is frightening
The report adds there will be a 6.5 million-tonne gap in copper supply and demand by 2030, with 347,000 tonnes needed to build green energy solutions like solar panels and wind turbines before the end of the decade.
Using International E-Waste Day as leverage to improve e-waste management, Recycle Your Electricals is launching ‘The Great Cable Challenge’ to recycle one million cables across households, local authorities, retailers, schools and community projects.
“Fess up time everyone - we all have our own stashes of unused or broken electricals," noted Company Executive Director Scott Butler. "We need to start ‘urban mining’ and help protect the planet and nature from the harmful impacts of mining for raw materials and instead value and use what we have already.”
According to the company’s website, companies like Currys, AO and Virgin Media O2 are already involved with International E-Waste Day, and a quick search on the recycling point finder revealed plenty of high street shops near us with waste management opportunities.
RSC Policy Adviser for the Environment Izzi Monk summarized: “As a nation, if we can crack the formula for recycling the copper we already have, we can make a real difference for the future of our planet.”
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