Donating old tech a Christmas bonus for Captain Bobcat

For Captain Bobcat – AKA Eva the “environmentalist who prefers the eco-friendly version of everything” – Give-Back January makes total sense.

Captain Bobcat revels in all things green – from vegan and vegetarian food to cruelty-free cosmetics to reducing the impact of the fashion industry. So when she learned she could do the planet a favour by disposing of her unwanted electricals properly, it felt like Christmas all over again. 

It was after the festive period that Eva – ‘Captain Bobcat’ after her son’s nickname – found herself and her young family inundated with electronic gadgets old and new. That’s also when she learned about Give-Back January. This is the campaign from Recycle Your Electricals encouraging the nation to donate or recycle electricals after the seasonal gift bonanza.

Taking a quick break from blogging about Veganuary, Eva set to work encouraging her readers to donate or recycle their surplus electricals.

“Did you get any gadgets for Christmas?” she writes. “I did and the children did too … so many gadgets: mobile phones, cameras, household items and even toys!”

In fact, Eva discovered, more than 21 million UK adults planned to buy tech in the five weeks between Black Friday in November and Christmas Day. That’s according to research by Recycle Your Electricals.

“If you recycle your old electricals in the right way almost all the materials get processed in the UK and become a valuable UK commodity”

The research also suggests that after buying new gadgets almost 3 million of us would be sending electricals we no longer want to landfill. And more than 2 million of us would just hang on to older stuff at home. “Do you? I do!” Eva writes.

What to do with old electricals after Christmas?

The question on Eva’s lips is what to do with the old stuff? It’s one many of us wrestle with.

“The last thing we want is them to end up in the dump and landfill. We could save millions of tonnes of CO₂ if we recycled our old electricals, instead of binning them,” she writes.

The real eye-opener came when she found out the value of our unwanted electricals to charity. 

So why don’t more of us donate our old electricals? “People simply don’t know what to do with unwanted electricals,” writes Eva.

Keen to put that right, she adds: “If you recycle your old electricals in the right way almost all the materials get processed in the UK and become a valuable UK commodity. The electrical recycling locator shows you where to recycle old electricals to ensure this happens.”

Check out more of Eva’s green tips at Captain Bobcat.