Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
An orchestra that plays instruments made out of old electrical products has been helping to raise awareness of small appliance recycling.
UK consumers are predicted to spend £7.3bn – or £144 per head – on electricals this Christmas, but a new survey from recyclenow.com has revealed that 35% of people believe they cannot recycle the small electrical goods they are replacing.
So last week the recycling organisation joined forces with The Really Rubbish Orchestra and BBC Last Choir Standing finalists Hear Me Now! for a special concert in London’s Covent Garden. The aim was to show that small electricals do have value and can be recycled.
Hear Me Now! sang carols accompanied by The Really Rubbish Orchestra playing a number of instruments built out of cast-off items such as old telephone receivers, a walkman and a computer scanner.
Recyclenow.com’s survey of 1,500 UK adults reveals that almost 30% of people throw broken or unwanted items away, whereas if they switched to recycling these items over 100,000 tonnes of waste electricals – weighing the equivalent of 14,000 double decker buses – could be diverted from landfill each year.
Despite the hundreds of recycling collection centres, 41% of people have never recycled a small appliance, even though almost a third of respondents had changed their kettle in the past 12 months.
