Brands, local authorities & community groups united nationwide for Great Cable Challenge on International E-Waste Day

Media Release, 31st October 2024

200 organisations including businesses, local authorities, and community groups including Currys, B&Q, Gumtree, Ecotricity, Connect (A Screwfix Company), QVC UK, Fora, and Careium encouraged their employees, customers and residents to recycle 1 million cables on International E-Waste Day (14th) as part of Recycle Your Electricals’ nationwide Great Cable Challenge.   

The support comes as research commissioned by Recycle Your Electricals, the consumer campaign led by not-for-profit Material Focus, revealed that UK households are stashing and throwing away enough cables to reach the moon and back, and contain an incredible 3,252 tonnes of copper.   

28 brands (representing 86,500 employees), 89 local authorities, 32 community groups, alongside waste authorities and producer compliance schemes took part in the Challenge nationwide.  With participants ranging from B&Q to the Scouts, the Great Cable Challenge highlights included: 

• Ecotricity, Britwind and Forest Green Rovers organised a cable collection for their 800 staff and will use the cables in wind turbines.
• Durham County Council ran their own cable collection competition in schools across the county, collecting a total of 151kg of cables.
• Currys who supported the campaign by arranging for cables to be collected from a number of organisations who held staff office collections.
• Virgin Media O2 is holding a Tech Drive in its offices in Reading and Wythenshaw (Manchester) where its employees can drop off their unused tech – from smartphones, to games consoles and cables – which will then be either refurbished, donated or recycled. 
• Gumtree held a collection for employees in their head office in October.
• Luton Borough Council joined forces with campaigners Kids Against Plastic to host their own Great Cable Challenge event in the local community, organising interactive workshops, a ‘HypnoCat gameshow’, and eye-catching displays including a dress made entirely of cables and a dog crafted from electrical items.
• B&Q organised a staff collection in their head office in Eastleigh across several weeks. Donations will be made to local charity Jamie’s Computers.
• Fora, has organised collection points at all London sites (over 60), as well as in Bristol, Leeds, Cambridge and Reading, engaging with both staff and over 20,000 members.
• QVC UK, who promoted ‘Recycling Your Electricals’ to their customer base through direct emails, on-air messaging across their live channels and on their website.
• Connect (a Screwfix  Company), who are holding an office collection for staff across October.
• Careium held collections for staff across 2 offices in different parts of the UK.
• REPIC, the UK’s lead member of the WEEE Forum also helped install an additional 200 collection points across UK communities including leisure centres, libraries and local offices, to help capture more unwanted or broken small household electrical items.

Support from the 200 organisations for The Great Cable Challenge included: holding cable and electrical collections in their offices; setting up collection points in local communities and schools running competitions; pop-up amnesty events; and promoting the cable collections across social media. 

In addition to the UK’s success, International E-Waste Day made a global impact, with over 160 international organisations participating across 47 countries and 6 continents. The day was coordinated by the WEEE Forum, the international association representing producer responsibility organisations and founder of International E-Waste Day. 

The Great Cable Challenge is still open, with multiple organisations holding cable and electrical collections until mid-November. Material Focus would like to hear from those who participated in the Challenge to share their results and contribute towards their goal of reaching 1 million cables recycled across the UK. Please send your results and photos to hello@materialfocus.org.uk to help showcase the collective impact.

Scott Butler, Executive Director of Material Focus, hopes The Great Cable Challenge is the start of a wider step-change in recycling behaviour. “We’re pleased that household names like B&Q, Currys, and Ecotricity and local authorities and community groups are joining the Challenge – and we hope their employees and customers will help us reach our 1 million cable goal.

People may not realise that cables and electricals contain valuable materials, not just copper, and that if binned or stashed, we lose everything inside of them when we don’t recycle them into something new.  To find your nearest recycling point for electricals check our Recycling Locator – anything with a plug, battery or cable can be reused and recycled.”

For more information about The Great Cable Challenge or the Recycle Your Electricals campaign, please visit: www.recycleyourelectricals.org.uk/international-e-waste-day-2024/.

International E-Waste Day (IEWD) 2024 took place on 14th October. The day aims to engage individuals, retailers, local authorities, businesses and communities to participate in this year’s campaign by encouraging everyone to recycle their electricals.

Notes to Editors:

For further information please contact Kate Hinton – kate@materialfocus.org.uk

Report comprises:

•  Research conducted by Opinium for Material Focus between 23rd – 26th July 2024 amongst a nationally-representative sample of 4,000 UK adults. 

About International E-Waste Day

IEWD was founded by the WEEE Forum, the international association representing producer responsibility organisations. The UK lead member is REPIC. IEWD is open to any one to participate. Stay tuned for more details on how your organisation can get involved and make a difference on International E-Waste Day by emailing hello@materialfocus.org.uk.

About Material Focus

Material Focus is a not-for-profit organisation whose goal is to stop the nation throwing away or hoarding all their old, small electricals. Material Focus is delivering the UK-wide Recycle Your Electricals campaign. The campaign is revealing the value hidden in electricals and is making it easier for us all to recycle and reuse the small electricals we no longer need by providing more recycling points as well as providing practical information on how households can reuse and recycle.

The campaign is funded by producers of electrical appliances which pays for a range of activities, including communications, behaviour change activities, increased recycling projects and research. Ultimately the aim is to support actions that will help the UK increase the levels of reuse and recycling of waste electricals.