Cables and Cords

In short

Cables are copper wrapped in plastic, which makes them genuinely valuable and completely recyclable — but never in your kerbside bin. Long flexible items are the single worst thing for a recycling facility because they wrap around the sorting machinery and shut it down. Take cables to an e-waste drop-off or a scrap metal dealer, and give away any that still work.

What it's made of

What something is made from is what decides where it can go — this is usually the reason an item can't be recycled.

• A copper conductor, which is the valuable part.
• PVC or rubber insulation around it.
• Connectors that often contain small amounts of gold, plus steel and aluminium.
• Some data cables also carry aluminium foil shielding.

Before you get rid of it

1. Coil each cable and tie it, so it cannot tangle with anything else.
2. Keep working cables separate from dead ones — the working ones are worth donating rather than recycling.
3. If you are donating a device, keep its charger with it. A charger separated from its device is much harder to rehome.
4. Take the bundle to an e-waste recycler or a scrap metal dealer. WasteMate lists e-waste recyclers and scrap metal dealers by region.

Common mistakes

• Putting cables in the kerbside recycling bin. Cables are the classic "tangler" — they wrap around the spinning shafts inside a sorting facility, and staff have to stop the line and cut them out by hand.
• Burning the insulation off to get at the copper. It releases dioxins and other seriously harmful fumes, and it is not worth it at household scale.
• Throwing away cables that work perfectly well. Most households have a drawer of them, and they are exactly what community repair groups and schools are short of.
• Binning phone chargers with the rubbish rather than treating them as e-waste.

Better than binning it

• Working cables are genuinely wanted — repair cafés, men's sheds, schools, community centres and computer refurbishers all take them.
• Standard cables like USB, HDMI and power leads are worth keeping a small labelled stock of at home.
• Charity shops will often take current-generation cables, though older proprietary ones are usually not worth their shelf space.

What happens to it

Cable recycling is mechanical rather than chemical. The cable is shredded, then granulated, and the copper is separated from the plastic by density — the heavy metal fraction drops out while the light plastic is carried away. The recovered copper goes back into the metal supply at high purity, and the plastic fraction can sometimes be reused as well. This is why dealers will take cable off your hands: the copper content genuinely pays for the process.

Questions people ask