£1bn circular Electricals economy if all e-waste is recycled

Media Release, 28th November 2025

Five years since the launch of Material Focus and the Recycle Your Electricals campaign, a new report has highlighted the significant progress that has been made to address the UK’s fastest growing waste stream – waste electricals. Thirty million more small electricals were recycled in 2023 and 2024 compared to 2022. However, major challenges still need to be addressed with over 100,000 tonnes of electricals still thrown away, and over 880 million items held onto in UK homes.

This impact report from Material Focus has found that it is getting easier to reuse and recycle electricals with funded pilots by Material Focus improving access for over 12 million people. But the UK is still failing to capture all the materials inside old and unwanted electricals that could deliver a billion pound circular electricals economy. And more products are rapidly coming onto the market such as FastTech and vapes which are wasting valuable resources and fuelling the rise in battery fires.

“Saving Valuable Materials” reveals the thinking and strategy behind the campaign, the significant progress that has been made, and sets out the challenges that lie ahead. 

Scott Butler, Executive Director, Material Focus commenting on what has made the campaign work:  “Our campaign strategy focuses on making it easier to reuse and recycle electricals, which requires a whole system approach. We do this through our insights and understanding how the system works, investment in new reuse and recycling options to make doing the right thing easier, and inspiring the nation to do their bit.  And we have made it easier for 12 million more people to recycle.

“We want to inspire more than criticise. We deliberately take a positive, solution-focused approach to making it easier for everyone to reuse and recycle their electricals.  Our multi-channel communications campaign was launched by HypnoCat who is hypnotising the nation into bagging up their electricals and reusing and recycling them. We also focus on key research areas which are changing the way people think about their electricals from bringing to the public’s attention the issue of the hidden treasures in our old and unwanted electricals, the vapocalypse, the cash people could make from selling their electricals, the rise of FastTech and the “Drawer of Doom” – yes that drawer of unused electricals we all have in our homes!

And central to our campaign delivery has been the people and organisations that we  work with. The producers, retailers, waste management companies, recyclers, community groups and local authority partners who help to spread the message, and provide more reuse and recycling points to make it easier for their customers and their residents to recycle.”

And significant progress has been made with 9.2 million more people saying they’re recycling electricals than in 2020* leading to 30 million more small electricals collected in 2 years 2023-24 compared to 2021-22: 

• Material Focus funded 871 brand new recycling points including bright pink bring banks through its Electricals Recycling Fund and is working with local authorities and other partners to deliver these.  These recycling points have started to fill the reuse and recycling gaps particularly in urban areas where people were less likely to own cars. 80% of the over 70 funded pilots are self-sustaining, and continued to run once the funding ended.  
• Built a fully accessible Recycle Your Electricals website to make it easy for the public across the UK to understand the issue and how to act. At its heart is the Recycling Locator, which has expanded rapidly – from 3,500 fully verified waste electrical drop-off points in 2020 to over 30,000 reuse and recycling drop off points today.  
• Highlighted through commissioning new research the environmental issues surrounding waste electricals including disposable vapes. Material Focus research found that 8 million vapes were discarded weekly – influencing the ban on single-use vapes in June 2025. And identified the rise of FastTech, those small, cheap electricals like vapes and mini-fans – Material Focus found that 471 million FastTech items were binned last year, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. When batteries from these small devices end up in the wrong bin, they cause over 1,200 dangerous fires, putting lives and infrastructure at risk.
• Making it easier for producers and retailers to comply with environmental regulations:
  • Thousands of retailers, producers and local authorities have downloaded Material Focus Industry briefings and communications toolkits. Many responsible retailers are going above and beyond their obligations – Currys, B&Q,  John Lewis/ Waitrose and Asda all now offer a free in-store recycling service for all small electricals. 
  • Supporting the UK environment agencies to identify and educate non-compliant electrical producers which doubled the number of producers complying with the regulations.

However despite this progress significant hurdles remain and the challenges are evolving and becoming more complex:

• Tech is evolving more quickly and faster than ever before. There are new challenges like e-textiles, MedTech, and FastTech, including hundreds of millions of vapes that didn’t exist just  five years ago. These FastTech items are being bought and just as quickly being thrown away which means many precious materials are being lost forever.   
• Significant opportunities still lie in the “urban mine” – a £1 billion circular electricals economy could be created by extracting more of these materials. Through our Circular Electricals Fund Material Focus is funding innovation in material use and recovery, design and business models. For example, mapping the UK’s “urban mine” with the British Geological Survey to ensure maximum recovery of precious materials And University College London’s “The Big Repair Project” will focus on making appliance repairs easier for everyone
• And we need to stop the increase in the number of fires happening in bin lorries and waste centres. These fires can have a devastating impact on those fighting the fires,  the communities where they happen, and the UK’s infrastructure.  Material Focus’s Stop Battery Fires campaign will continue and the organisation looks forward to working with more stakeholders to widen its impact. 

“We look forward to continuing to bring together all the stakeholders to help build a circular electricals future for the UK. The opportunity is significant – at least £1 billion of materials are hidden inside the electricals we throw away or hold onto which are critical to the UK’s economy – from the manufacture of new tech, to the materials that are essential in the green economy. We will need a whole system approach to achieve this – from action from more retailers to make it easier to buy smarter and recycle, for producers to deliver more durable and repairable products, and public partnerships to make reusing and recycling as easy as possible. And we will need more innovations to come to market to extract more of these materials.” 

ENDS

For media enquiries please contact Kate Hinton kate@materialfocus.org.uk

Notes to Editors

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.

E-waste was then, and continues to be, the UK’s – and the world’s – fastest- growing waste stream. While there was plenty of good work happening, recycling targets were being missed and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of electricals were being thrown away. 

New initiatives –

The Vapocalypse

Won multiple awards

Partnerships – Currys, Sue Ryder, Nottingham

We have joined forces with experts at National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) , National Cyber Security Centre and Bloomberg Intelligence. And large retailers like Currys, B&Q, shopping channel QVC plus Westfield shopping centres in London.

Together we’ve highlighted important national issues including the valuable materials hidden inside electricals, the growing number of fires caused by loose and hidden batteries inside electricals – and how to dispose of them safely.

We’ve worked with over two thirds of local authorities to inspire, educate and encourage local residents. And developed a school programme to do the same
for future generations. We’ve also been privileged enough to win some awards for our work. 

“We now have a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t. All informed by a strong set of data, insights, behaviour change models and experience. But despite huge progress, over 100,000 tonnes of electricals are still being thrown away every year, and over 880 million electricals sit idle in UK homes. And our love of tech continues to grow. Cheap FastTech, like vapes, mini-fans and light up toilet seats, continue to surge onto the market, losing valuable materials if binned, and causing fires that damage vehicles and property and are risking lives. 

We need to understand the urban mine more, and how we can extract more of these materials.  And we need to have a system that makes it much easier for everyone to recycle their electricals, retailers have a key role to play in this.”