Recycle Your Electricals

Small electrical items, such as:

• Kitchen appliances e.g. toasters, kettles, food blenders, coffee machines
• Home appliances e.g. irons, fans, radios, clocks, DVD players
• Personal care and grooming appliances e.g. shavers, electric toothbrushes, hair dryers, straighteners
• Small electrical DIY tools
• Cameras
• Radios, mini hi-fis, cassette players
• Games consoles, laptops
• Wires, plugs and chargers

Disposable and reusable vapes.

Household batteries such as AA, AAA, C, D, 6V, 9V and button batteries.

Note: These are only examples - a full list of acceptable items will be published closer to the launch of the service.

Larger electrical items such as TVs, monitors, microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, washing machines, fridges, freezers and other bulky appliances will not be accepted. Dismantled items will not be accepted either.

Batteries from children's ride-on toys, vehicle batteries, industrial batteries and sealed lead acid/gel batteries will not be accepted. These types of batteries must not be put in your brown recycling or black household waste bin. They must be disposed of safely at your local Household Waste Recycling Centre.

Important:

• If your electrical item doesn't fit in a standard sized carrier bag, then it will be too large to fit into the compartment on our waste collection vehicle - you will need to make alternative disposal arrangements. 
• If you put out an item that cannot be collected, our collection team will leave it on top of your bin with an information sticker explaining why and what you need to do next.
• A full list of non-acceptable items will be published closer to the launch of the service.

Small electrical items: Place in a standard sized carrier bag - do not tie the bag.

Vapes: Place in a sealed clear sandwich bag.

Batteries: Place in a sealed clear sandwich bag.

Your small electrical items, vapes and batteries will be collected by your waste collection team on your usual waste collection day. To ensure they are collected, please place your bin at the edge of your property by 7am, with your bagged items positioned on top of the bin lid.

Click here to check your bin collection day.

Important:

• Do not mix the items e.g. vapes and batteries must be presented in separate, clear sandwich bags.
• Do not put any bags of vapes or batteries inside the carrier bag containing small electrical items.
• Only one standard sized carrier bag of small electrical items will be collected from each property, each week.
• If you put out an item that cannot be collected, our collection team will leave it on top of your bin with an information sticker explaining why and what you need to do next.

Homes that share large four-wheeled communal bins, typically located in bin stores, will not be included in the initial launch of this service on 25 January 2027.

We will introduce collections for these properties in a later phase, as we are testing different solutions to make sure the service works well for everyone. We will contact residents directly when the service becomes available at their home.

Collections will take place every week from Monday 25 January 2027.

Your small electrical items, vapes and batteries will be collected by your waste collection team on your usual waste collection day. To ensure they are collected, please place your bin at the edge of your property by 7am, with your bagged items positioned on top of the bin lid.

Click here to check your bin collection day.

No, it is provided as part of our household waste and recycling collection service.

To help keep collections efficient and ensure all residents can use the service, we will collect up to one standard sized carrier bag of small electrical items per property, per week.

If you have more small electrical items than can fit in one bag, you can either present them for collection over several weeks or take them to your local Household Waste Recycling Centre.

Larger electrical items which cannot be collected through this service, can be taken to your local Household Waste Recycling Centre or collected through the Council's Bulky Waste Collection Service.

If your electrical items are still in good working order, please consider re-use before recycling. Many national and local charities accept working electrical items for resale, helping to raise valuable funds while giving items a second life.

For alternative re-use and disposal options, click here.

We advise that personal information is deleted wherever possible before recycling. For more information on this, visit: Recycle Your Electricals - How Do I Delete My Data?

This is a weekly collection service, and we will not return for missed collections. If your items are not collected, please ensure they have been presented correctly and place them out again on your next scheduled collection day.

No - this is a household waste collection service. Click here for more information on business waste.

Electrical items are dismantled and recycled, allowing valuable materials such as copper, aluminium, steel and plastics to be recovered and reused.

We are introducing this new collection service to make it easier for residents to recycle small electrical items, vapes and batteries from home. The service will help increase recycling rates, recover valuable materials for reuse, and reduce the number of electrical items ending up in household waste bins.

Separately collecting batteries and vapes will also help reduce the risk of fires caused by damaged batteries, helping to protect our collection teams, vehicles and waste processing facilities.

The service has been designed to be a simple, convenient and low-cost way to improve recycling opportunities for residents, while supporting the Council's commitment to managing waste safely and sustainably.

We are committed to the delivery of waste service changes as required by the Environment Act 2021. 

In June 2022, the Council agreed plans to introduce weekly food waste collections from 2024, as well as the introduction of 1,2,3 Weekly, a new ‘twin stream’ waste and recycling collection system. This would allow residents to recycle more at the kerbside, including a wider variety of plastics including pots, tubs and trays, cartons, aluminium foil and glass bottles and jars. Having made this decision in 2022, the Council began to plan for its service changes, with funding for vehicles, bins and caddies approved in April 2023.

However, in October 2023, and then again in November 2024, the Government made significant policy announcements, including the introduction of ‘Simpler Recycling’. These national policy announcements were unexpected, conflicting in policy direction, and ultimately impacted our ability to continue with our approved plans.

Now that the requirements for Simpler Recycling have been set in law, a new £50.5 million recycling facility for Hampshire is under construction. The MRF will enable residents to recycle these additional items at the kerbside. Based in Eastleigh, it is expected to be operational in mid-2028. For more information on the new MRF, click here and for more information on Simpler Recycling in Hampshire, click here.

In the meantime, in a positive step towards transforming our recycling services, we successfully introduced our food waste collection service in October 2025, and we will be introducing our new kerbside service for small electricals, vapes and batteries in January 2027.