Big brands back the return of The Great Cable Challenge

In celebration of this year’s International E-Waste Day on 14th October, Material Focus is bringing back ‘The Great Cable Challenge’ – a nationwide campaign aimed at tackling the millions of cables and other old and unwanted electricals sitting idle in UK homes. This Autumn, Material Focus is calling on people, local authorities, retailers, and community projects across the UK to take part in the challenge, and help stop valuable copper from going to waste.

Already, a growing number of major brands and retailers are backing this year’s Great Cable Challenge – from high street retailers and major brands to community groups and local authorities. Many companies and organisations are already on board including QVC UK, who will use their website and live shopping channels to encourage customers to recycle electricals, and B&Q, Samsung Electronics UK, Boots, Virgin Media O2, Beko, and Barnardo’s who are encouraging employees to recycle through office collections. Other companies such as Back Market will be accepting any cables for recycling at their offices as well as hosting a pop-up event pre IEWD, where collection of electricals will also be available. Fora, eBay, Mazuma, Careium, Freegle, and Dunelm are also participating in the campaign. These partners will be running collection points, promoting the campaign to their communities, and inspiring people to dig out their cables and get recycling.

International E-Waste Day (IEWD) is a global moment to highlight electrical waste – the fastest-growing waste stream in the world, and in the UK. Each year, millions of people and countries worldwide join together to raise awareness and drive action towards reuse and recycling of unwanted electricals.

First launched for International E-Waste Day 2024, the Great Cable Challenge brought together 200 organisations who ran collections and held events in offices, schools, shops and local communities, helping thousands of people clear out their ‘drawer of doom’ and recycle their old cables and electricals. Organisations like Curry’s, B&Q, Gumtree, Ecotricity, Virgin Media O2, and 98 local authorities all encouraged their employees, customers and residents to recycle their cables . This year, The Great Cable Challenge is back – aiming to build on last year’s success by engaging even more partners and inspiring action on reusing and recycling electricals.

According to Material Focus’ research, the average UK household is holding onto and binning 22 cables which, across the UK, is enough cables to reach the moon and back! Each of these cables contains valuable, critical and finite materials like copper, which are lost forever when cables and other electricals are thrown away. Copper is also 100 percent recyclable and uses significantly less energy than mining for new materials and can be reused to create anything from phones, transport, clean energy and medical equipment.

Anyone can get involved in the Great Cable Challenge – households, local authorities, retailers, community projects and businesses.

Simply bag up your cables – and any other old, unwanted electricals you find in your ‘drawer of doom’ – and visit Recycle Your Electricals’ postcode locator to find your local donation or recycling point.

Material Focus has created a campaign toolkit to enable local authorities, retailers, and community projects across the UK to take part in the challenge and help inspire people to recycle their old cables and other small electricals.

Scott Butler, Executive Director of Material Focus said, “Almost all of us have old cables stashed away at home. Fess up time, I have a box under my bed of cables I’ve been holding onto ‘just in case.’ Last year, over 200 organisations joined The Great Cable Challenge and helped save hundreds of kilos of copper from going to waste – proving just how big a difference we can all make – one cable at a time. By recycling just one cable, we can all help reclaim valuable materials like copper and see how easy it is to make a positive impact.”.