Inspect your gadgets!

Toaster catch fire? Printer making odd noises? Don’t just throw old stuff away, or hide it in the sh

Moving house last year brought my personal “gadget footprint” into focus in a very uncomfortable way.

It started when I cleared out the old flat and found a small mountain of broken electronics cluttering up the cupboards. I discovered, stashed away and completely forgotten, not one but two broken computer printers, along with an old leaky kettle, a defunct first-generation DVD player and a steam iron whose plug had burst into flames one scary morning a while ago.

At least by hanging on to these items for several years, I could take them to Kentish Town’s excellent recycling centre, where they went into a special new skip for “waste electrical and electronic equipment” or WEEE. This reduced my guilty feelings by a small degree. However, having written a whole book to encourage people to mend things, I am determined that, in the new flat, I am going to cut down on my contribution to the electronic waste mountain.

Remembering my “R” principles for reducing waste, my resolution for the new flat is to reuse and repair as many of my gadgets as I can, and so far, I’m doing well. Having bought a new widescreen monitor for the living-room computer (for use in place of a TV, now we watch almost everything on “catch-up” services online), I’ve found a good home for the old screen at the office of a campaign group. Rather than throw away things that are in working order, “freecycling” such items is an excellent – and charitable – alternative.

Meanwhile, repairing electronic gadgets can be easier than you think. In fact, simply changing the fuse will get most machines back in action in about two minutes flat. But actual malfunctions are often fixable, too. Lamps and other light fittings are the simplest machines imaginable; every part can be repaired or replaced using just a screwdriver, a pair of pliers and a dose of common sense.

But more complicated machines can also stop working because of something very easy to fix, too. Often the power cord becomes detached or a connection breaks inside the on/off switch. A cheap soldering iron can be used to reattach these wires and enable you to have further years of good service.

Other simple repairs, where parts can be ordered and replaced at home, include door seals on fridges and heating elements for toasters or hairdryers. The good old internet is an excellent resource for the home maintenance of appliances – you can use it to find copies of lost manuals, to track down replacement parts and get into long online conversations about common faults.

And when something really is broken, sending it to landfill is no longer necessary, thanks to the WEEE regulations aimed at reducing the huge number of electronic gadgets we throw away (200 million a year in the UK, at the last count). If you can’t trade in your old machine at the shop when you go to buy the replacement, your local council should – like mine – at the very least offer a collection service or a dedicated area at your local recycling centre.

Remember, however, that keeping gadgets going is almost always better than scrapping them. And this is not just for the resources and money you can save, but for many other non-green and non-thrifty benefits.

The fun involved in learning new skills, the pride you feel at being able to fix something yourself, and the simple joy of living a more self-reliant life are just a few of the more personal reasons to try mending things. So, why not give it a go?

Siân Berry was a founder of the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s. Her book “Mend It! 400 Easy Repairs for Everyday Items” is published by KyleCathie (£16.99)

Electronic Waste

E-waste is one of our fastest-growing waste problems, as more and more of us buy or replace toasters, computers, televisions… all the gadgets we love so much.

In the UK we throw away an estimated 1.2 million tonnes of electrical and electronic waste. But in the United States the problem is particularly bad, with e-waste making up 3-5 per cent of the waste stream, mostly heading straight for landfill.

Different estimates have the number of obsolete computers in the US, for example, pegged at between 315 and 680 million units and rapidly growing. And the problems of recycling and managing computer waste are only just being examined. In the meantime, they end up in landfill, or in piles being sorted through by hand, which contain chemicals that Greenpeace has warned can be toxic.