Electrical waste & WEEE

WEEE stands for waste electrical and electronic equipment, which is the formal name for anything with a plug, a battery or a circuit board in it. In practice it means the appliances nobody else will take.

It is the category people most often get stuck with, because it is exactly the stuff a general waste collection turns down and a skip firm will not have.

What we take

• Fridges, freezers and fridge-freezers — including chest freezers and the one in the garage
• Washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, cookers, hobs and extractors
• Televisions and monitors, flat panel and the old glass ones
• Computers, printers, servers, network kit and the cable that went with them
• Small domestic: microwaves, kettles, vacuums, hi-fi, power tools
• Storage heaters, immersion heaters, boilers and heat pumps
• Solar inverters, optimisers and PV cabling

Why a fridge cannot go in a skip

Because of what is in the circuit and in the foam. Fridges and freezers contain refrigerant gases and blowing agents that have to be extracted before the unit is broken up, which is a controlled process and needs the right kit. Crush one in a skip and that goes straight into the air.

This is why skip firms exclude them, why the tip makes you queue separately for them, and why a fridge is the single most commonly fly-tipped appliance in the country. It is also why we get asked about them more than anything else on this list.

We are set up for them. There is no drama to it at your end — it goes on the van like everything else.

Data, if it is a computer

We will take the hardware. We will not tell you it has been data-wiped, because that is a certified process and the certificate should come from somebody who does it properly.

Pull the drive, or have your IT people wipe it, and the machine is then just metal, plastic and boards. If you need certified destruction of the drives, say so and we will point you at somebody who issues the paperwork rather than pretend it is us. For a business clearing a whole office, this is worth sorting before the day — see business clearance.

There is metal in all of it

Appliances are largely steel, with copper in every motor and transformer. That value comes off the price of the collection in the same way it does on a clearance. On a load that is mostly white goods, it makes a real difference to the number.

Batteries

Loose batteries are their own thing rather than part of a WEEE load, particularly lithium. See scrap batteries — and if you have a home storage battery coming off a wall, ring before anybody disconnects it.