UKC

I have three old cameras, all with faults. Does anyone know if any charities will take these for recycling? Oxfam?

Doesn't seem right to just bin them.

In reply to Flinticus:

I'm in the same boat with you on this one. On a certain auction site, people seem to be able to sell cameras for spares and repairs (not for a lot of money, but bare with me) which I assume they repair and give a new lease of life to. Could be worth trying?

In reply to Flinticus:

I think there are places in the UK which recycle electronic goods.

In reply to Flinticus:

Your local council tip will have a small electricals recycling section, so take them there?

In reply to LastBoyScout:


In the spirit of the OP, could you guarantee that the local council will recycle the camera or just dump it into landfill?

In reply to The Lemming:

They wont dump it in landfill, as that's expensive and there may be batteries that will leak nasties etc. More likely to be sold on and shipped off to the third world. There is more copper in a tonne of electrical goods than a tonne of ore. Lots of information to be found on e-waste, and the dangers to people and the planet that this causes.

There are charities that take electrical good, but I expect broken items get sold on as well. You can't blame the council or charities making a few quid selling off rubbish. I don't know if there are any ethical ways to dispose of electrical goods.

In reply to The Lemming:


My tip posts statistics on % of stuff actually recycled.

As Dread-i says, given there are a lot of rare/valuable metals in electronics, it makes sense to recycle and there are stiff regulations on hazardous waste - see the WEEE regs: http://www.hse.gov.uk/waste/waste-electrical.htm

In reply to dread-i:


Wow, I never knew that. That's quite a scary and sad fact to have in this modern world.

In reply to The Lemming:

More (old) stats for you.
"A ton of used mobile phones, or about 6,000 handsets, contained about 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) of silver, 340 grams of gold, 140 grams of palladium and 130 kg of copper, StEP said. A phone battery contains another 3.5 grams of copper.

"Combined value: over $15,000 at today's prices,"
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ewaste-idUSTRE58E5JF20090915

Which sounds very lucrative. But when you do a google images for :
"e-waste india" or "e-waste africa" you get a different picture (excuse the pun).
(e-waste uk shows a bunch of charts and bar graphs, because we're good at recycling and the have charts to prove it.)

I expect that in many cases, its quicker and easier to burn the items and extract the large amount of copper, than to do labour and process intensive work and recycle all of the metals.

I hope that I'm wrong though and someone can point me in the right direction.

In reply to Flinticus:

50-70 million tones of waste electrical items are produced every year in the EU, and 30% of waste electrical items in the UK are exported illegally producing a huge legacy of pollution in the developing world where advanced processing of WEEE is unavailable. It maybe more environmentally friendly to keep it in the draw until we can recycle our own waste.