Cash prize up for grabs for recycling unwanted electricals

People are being urged to take any old, broken or unwanted electricals to Glossop recycling centre, to be in with a chance of winning a cash prize. 

If you're having a spring clear out and unearth any electrical goods, you can take them to the Melandra Road centre - or the Buxton centre on Waterswallows Road - and in return you could win one of fifteen £100 cash prizes. 

From hair-dryers to hedge-trimmers, fairy lights to fridges and toasters to TVs, there's a wide range of household appliances you can take to Derbyshire County Council's recycling centres.

From Monday 2 March until Sunday 5 April, you can exchange them for a golden ticket. 

All you have to do is ask for a golden ticket from a member of staff at the recycling centre, type in your unique ticket number online at www.derbyshire.gov.uk/electric and find out instantly if you’re a winner. The more items you recycle, the more tickets you’ll get.

Cllr Simon Spencer, DCC's Cabinet Member for Highways, Transport and Infrastructure, said: “It’s a shocking fact that across the UK we throw away more than a quarter of the electrical items we buy instead of recycling them.

“Reducing waste and increasing recycling is one of our key pledges to help reduce carbon emissions. The carbon footprint is much lower when recycled materials are used than when things are manufactured from scratch.

“Our recycling contractors salvage precious metals and other valuable materials from the items residents bring us so that they can be recycled. For example one household iron contains enough steel to produce 13 steel cans.

“So please bring us those old electricals. We’ll put them to good use and as an added bonus, you could win £100.”

The county council say it costs tax payers £43 million a year for the authority to deal with waste in Derbyshire which people choose not to recycle. 

But if every Derbyshire household took just one electrical item to one of the county council's recycling centres in March, an additional 318,000 appliances could be recycled and help to cut those costs. 

The competition prizes are part-funded by Recycling Lives – the contractor which works on behalf of the county council to collect and recycle electrical items taken to its recycling centres. The competition is only open to Derbyshire residents.

All electrical appliances are accepted including:

• coffee makers
• electric toothbrushes
• electric garden equipment
• fairy lights
• fridges, freezers and fridge-freezers
• game consoles
• irons
• kettles
• lamps
• laptops, tablets and PCs
• microwaves
• music systems
• phones
• power tools
• printers
• radios
• sat navs
• shavers
• slow cookers
• straighteners and hairdryers
• washers and dryers
• vacuums

For a full list of the other items you can take to the recycling centres and their locations, visit www.derbyshire.gov.uk/recyclingcentres. 

People are advised to ensure all personal data has been removed from items such as laptops, mobile phones or tablets before you take them to a recycling centre.

If you have a broken electrical or other household items that you’d like to get repaired, if possible you can take them along to one of Derbyshire’s six repair cafes.

Qualified volunteers aim to fix your items free of charge rather than them being thrown out. Visit www.derbyshire.gov.uk/repaircafes for more info.