How to cash in on your old electricals during the cost of living crisis - top tips on selling tech

A recycling campaign is urging UK families to sell unused electricals to help with the cost of living crisis.

Almost 21million unused phones, computers and consoles, worth up to £5.63billion, are currently hoarded in UK homes, Recycle Your Electricals estimates. Its research shows that the average household could raise around £200 from unused tech to help them with the cost of living crisis, ahead of International e-waste Day on 14 October.

Electricals are the fastest growing waste stream in the UK, and 155,000 tonnes of wasted tech is thrown away in the UK alone each year. REPIC, a not-for-profit recycling compliance scheme, found a staggering 11.7million laptops and 9.17m tablets have the potential to be sold or recycled, while 18.5 m games consoles and 6.5 m computers could also be flogged.

Louise Grantham, chief executive at REPIC said : “We’re keen to make consumers aware that the real value is keeping small electricals in circulation for longer - either through passing them on, selling them or recycling them at the end of their useful life. Decluttering enables precious material to be recovered and reused in the manufacturing of new products and collectively makes a big difference to our environment by reducing the demand for new raw materials.”

While Scott Butler, executive director of Material Focus, said: “This new research has shown again what we know. There is a huge amount of value in a household’s unwanted electricals, whether sold so that they can be reused, donated to help those in need, or recycled so that the valuable materials inside our devices can be recovered and made into something new.”

Recycle your Electricals top tips on selling

• Sort Separate your unwanted electricals into 3 piles: sell, donate, or recycle. It makes the rest so much easier.
• Prepare Before bagging up your old items to donate, sell, or recycle make sure you remove batteries, bulbs and memory cards, and delete data from smart devices and IT.
• Cash in Check out peer-to-peer market places – where you get to keep most of the sale price. Or, if you’re replacing a product, some retailers buy back your old one.

Re-sale value of hoarded tech items:

• Games console re-sale value can range from an Xbox One at £110 to a Nintendo Switch at £200.
• Tablets can be re-sold for between £193 and £420
• Laptops resale value range between £274 and £420
• Desktop computers, including the monitor, could be re-sold for around £250.