Recycle How and where to recycle your electricals

Never put electrical items in your general waste or recycling bin: always dispose of them separately from other types of waste by using a dedicated electricals collection or drop off point. Use the Recycle Your Electricals locator to find locations.

Some Leicestershire district and borough councils will collect electronic devices as part of their kerbside recycling service. Please check with your local district or borough council for advice on what, how and when they collect. Visit our kerbside recycling collections page to see a list of links to district and borough council websites. 

Leicestershire District and borough Councils offer bulky collection services for larger electrical items that might be difficult to transport to a Recycling and Household Waste site such as washing machines, fridges, freezers and other appliances. Please see our bulky collections page for more information.

You could also:

Anything with a plug, battery or cable can be recycled, including:

  • Phones & tablets
  • Laptops & computers
  • Chargers & cables
  • Kitchen appliances
  • DIY tools
  • Hairdryers & personal care items
  • Vapes
  • Mini-fans
  • Toys
  • Headphones and earbuds

Why electrical items should never go in your bin

It’s a fire hazard

Mixing batteries with other types of waste increases the risk of dangerous fires.
Many electrical devices contain batteries, even if they don’t look like they do. These “hidden” batteries can be crushed in bin lorries or waste facilities, causing them to ignite and cause fast‑spreading fires. Battery‑related fires put waste workers, emergency services and local communities at risk, and cause costly damage to vehicles and recycling sites.

It wastes valuable materials

Electrical items contain metals such as steel, copper, aluminium, lithium, gold and others. When electricals are put in household bins, these materials are not recovered and are lost forever as they are either sent to landfill or energy‑from‑waste facilities.

This means more mining is needed to extract raw materials to make new electrical devices —causing unnecessary environmental damage, habitat loss, increasing costs and unnecessarily wasting energy:

  • Recycling one mobile phone can save 0.5 -0.7kWh energy, enough to power a laptop for around 44 hours.
  • Recycling 1 million mobile phones would save enough energy to power approximately 24,000 homes for a year.

Recycling keeps critical materials circulating in the UK economy, supporting job creation and reducing reliance on imported raw materials. It’s estimated that by recycling instead of binning electricals, £850 million worth of precious metals could be salvaged each year in the UK.

Use of recovered and recycled raw materials keeps the cost of making new devices lower too, so everyone benefits from recycling.

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Alternatives to recycling electrical items

Recycling is the best option for disposing of electrical items at the end of their useable lives, but many electrical items are discarded before this point simply because individuals don’t want them anymore.

Keeping our existing electrical devices in use for as long as possible and reusing unwanted electrical items is preferable to recycling them as it avoids the cost and environmental impact of making new ones.

Before throwing anything away, ask:

  • Can I still use it?
  • Could it be repaired or upgraded to make it useful again?
  • Could it be sold or donated so someone else can benefit from it?

Repairs and upgrades

Many electrical items can be revived with:

  • New components such as; batteries, memory or storage capacity
  • A software reset or update
  • Minor repairs

Repairs and upgrades to existing devices can often be cheaper than buying new devices.

Find repair organisations in Leicestershire on our waste prevention map.

Rehoming unwanted devices

Electrical items that you no longer want may still be useful to others.

Selling your unwanted electricals could be a good source of income. The average UK home contains around 30 unused or broken electrical items with a typical potential resale value of £1,300 to £6,300 per household.

Donating unwanted electrical devices to charities can help to alleviate digital exclusion by allowing devices to be refurbished and redistributed. You’ll find a list of charity donation schemes at: https://recycleyourelectricals.org.uk/donate-electrical-goods/

Prior to rehoming smart devices, ensure that you have saved copies of any important information, documents or photos they contain, remove any memory or SIM cards and ensure that your personal and private data stored on the device has been destroyed so it can’t be retrieved. Advice on destroying data without destroying the device can be found on the Recycle Your electricals website