Small electrical items recycling

Everything with a plug, battery, or cable (including loose cables) can be recycled and turned into things like playgrounds or life-saving equipment.

Small electrical items (like toasters, kettles, vapes, hairdryers) can be recycled through your kerbside recycling collection, but they must fit inside a standard carrier bag (not bin bags).

Recycling larger electrical items

For any larger electrical and electronic items, such as TVs, fridges, washing machines, you can:

• book a visit to the household waste recycling centre (HWRC)
• book a council collection by phoning 023 9284 1105 or emailing recyclingandrubbish@portsmouthcc.gov.uk

There are several options to recycle electrical and electronic waste.

Recycling at home

You can put small electrical items with your regular recycling. Take out any glass, like lightbulbs, put the items in a normal-sized bag, and place the bag on top of your recycling bin on collection day (not inside).

If you live in a block of flats, don’t put electrical items on top of the communal bins. Use other ways to recycle them.

Recycling points

You can take your electrical waste to the Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC) in Port Solent. Remember to book a slot first.

You can find recycling points near you using the Recycling Locator on the Recycling Your Electricals website.

Other ways to recycle

Share Portsmouth has a local map showing where you can repair, donate, sell, or recycle your unwanted electrical items in Portsmouth.

Some shops will collect and recycle your old electrical items for free when you buy a new one, like a washing machine or refrigerator. Check with the shop.

You can put small electrical items out with their green recycling bin. These items must fit into a standard-sized carrier bag and be placed on top of the green recycling bin (not inside). Larger items will not be collected.

A special company takes these items to recycle the metals and parts.

Items that can be collected from home include:

• toasters
• kettles
• coffee machines
• vapes
• hairdryers
• small lamps (please remove the bulbs)
• DVD players
• children’s electrical toys
• portable speakers
• cables

Electrical items that do not fit in a carrier bag cannot be collected from the kerbside. However, you can recycle electrical items at a Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC). The HWRC accepts small and large electrical appliances as well as batteries. This includes:

• car batteries
• electrical/electronic equipment and appliances
• fridges and freezers
• light bulbs

Cookers go in the metal bin so the metal can be recycled. Metals are taken out and the parts that can’t be recycled, like hard plastics, are sent to landfill.

Items like TVs and large appliances (e.g. washing machines) are sold to buyers who are certified with the Environment Agency for refurbishment, resale, and reuse.

Fluorescent lightbulbs are hazardous and treated separately to remove mercury. LED lightbulbs go in the small electrical appliance container.

Halogen lightbulbs are not recycled and go in the general waste bin.

Batteries can be taken to the HWRC by the electrical waste area. Some batteries can also be collected at the kerbside. Find out how to recycle batteries in Portsmouth.

Our old electrical items have valuable materials like plastic and metals such as gold, copper, steel, and aluminium.

When you recycle these items, they go to a reprocessing place where people take them apart by hand. Then machines break them into small pieces. Magnets pull out the steel and other metals, and other machines separate the rest. The plastic is also sorted into different types and ground up.

When we get back the metals and plastics, they become valuable for the UK. They are sold and can be made into new things from bicycles to life-saving equipment. The Recycle Your Electricals team made a video that explains this process (watch time: 3 minutes). You can become an expert by watching it.

We have teamed up with Recycle Your Electricals (RYE) to help everyone reuse and recycle old electrical items and electronics. This way, we can make the most of the valuable materials inside them.

Throwing away old electrical items and electronics is one of the fastest-growing types of waste in the world, including in the UK. Every year, 155,000 tonnes of electrical items are thrown away instead of being reused or recycled. This creates electronic waste, which is very harmful to the environment and to people’s health.

For more information on how to recycle electricals in the UK visit Recycle Your Electricals.