Commercial e-waste specialist Intelligent Waste Management Ltd (iWaste) has reported growing demand for a unique direct-to-customer service as consumers continue to seek environmentally-friendly ways of destroying sensitive data and disposing of unwanted small electricals.

The popularity of the Arborfield Cross company’s Send & Destroy service comes as the domestic electronic waste mountain continues to grow and the UK is this year set to overtake Norway and become the world’s largest contributor to e-waste.

It also coincides with new Government proposals which would see producers and retailers taking responsibility for financing the collection of old electronic goods from households, starting in 2026.

The Send & Destroy scheme involves customers sending small electronic items – such as tablets, mobile phones, hard drives, memory cards, CDs and RAM sticks – to iWaste which destroys sensitive data, recycles components and returns a Certificate of Destruction to confirm the work has been carried out.

iWaste Operations Director Sam Mountain said there had been a dramatic increase in demand for Send & Destroy, which he put down to a growing awareness of how e-waste affects the environment and of the dangers of valuable information getting into the wrong hands. He said:

“Computing or data storage equipment is regularly being renewed as the requirement for more speed or storage evolves. Businesses and households have often paid very little or no thought to the end destination of old, broken or obsolete models."

“That is very worrying because personal data, home and family videos, photos, friends’ names and numbers, banking information, internet information, website history and school/university work is all contained on domestic equipment."

“For businesses, the list is endless and includes strategic business plans, financial information, customer lists, confidential contracts, pricing information, firewall configuration files and encryption keys."

“Every email you have ever sent, every password to every system you use, every website ever visited and every document you have ever created are all easily available in today’s sophisticated world of cyber thieves."

“Take the experts advice – the only way to ensure complete data destruction is to physically destroy these items.”

Sam, whose company is certified by B Corp, known as the gold standard for sustainability, as well as off-setting its carbon emissions through a tree-planting partnership with Forest Carbon, said green issues were also behind the increasing demand for Send & Destroy. He added:

“We have all seen the extremes of weather across the world brought on by climate change and more people are waking up to the fact that we must do something to save our planet."

“Even if recycling valuable components from electrical items may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, all we can do is take one step at a time and ensure we are giving it our best shot – if everyone does the same we will see change.”

Independent not-for-profit organisation Material Focus says more than half a billion small ‘FastTech’ electricals – everyday small electrical items, from headphones to cables, decorative lights to mini fans and even single-use vapes – were bought in the UK in 2022 with 471 million items binned.

Material Focus’s mission is to stop electricals being hoarded and thrown away, and ensure they’re reused and recycled instead, especially precious materials contained in small electricals, including copper, lithium and stainless steel, through its UK-wide Recycle Your Electricals campaign.

The London-based organisation says more than 100,000 tonnes of waste electricals are thrown away every year and 880 million electrical items (of all kinds) are lying unused in UK homes – that’s 30 items gathering dust in the average household.

Material Focus estimates that 2.8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions – equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the road – could be saved should all of the small electricals being hoarded or thrown away be returned to the economy.

Online comparison and switching service Uswitch says the UK is set to overtake Norway and become the world’s largest contributor to e-waste this year, with current level at 23.9kg of e-waste per capita, just behind Norway’s 26kg.

A study by the firm also reveals that IT and telecoms e-waste has nearly doubled in size since 2008, with projections suggesting that e-waste in the UK could rise as high as 55,000 tonnes by the year 2030.

Government plans that would see producers and retailers taking responsibility for financing the collection of electronic goods from households, starting in 2026, is currently at the consultation stage.

According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) the new plan will allow consumers to have the option to either schedule pickups for electrical waste (e-waste) from their homes or conveniently drop off items during their weekly shopping trips.

The purpose of the consultation is to seek views on reforms to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2013, which are intended to drive up levels of separately collected WEEE for re-use and recycling.

It also sets out detailed proposals for reforms relating to the provision of collection infrastructure for household WEEE, ensuring producers and distributors finance the full net cost of collection and proper treatment of products that end up as waste.

iWaste, established in 2013, has invested heavily in infrastructure, vans, people and a new bespoke, cloud-based management portal which has driven an ambitious move to a paperless operation. Last year iWaste, which employs 35 people, also celebrated its 10th anniversary and moved to bigger premises outside Reading to facilitate strategic business growth.