By properly disposing your electrical waste, you help ensure that discarded appliances don't land on the dump, but can be re-used or recycled instead. This is not only a good thing for public health and the environment. Also from an economic point of view, the recovery of electrical waste is particularly interesting. After all, quite some recovered materials are becoming more and more scarce - read: more expensive - raw materials which, when once recovered, don't have to be mined anymore.
Environmental arguments
Recupel ensures that discarded appliances are actually collected, recycled ánd sanitized. The latter refers to the separation and removal of hazardous substances. All together, Recupel keeps about 1,500 tons of hazardous substances from damaging the environment.
The mercury from low-energy light bulbs and TL lamps, for example, is neatly intercepted and suctioned throughout the processing. Greenhouse gases from old refrigerators are destroyed in specially equipped installations. Condensers are not just grinded - because that would release hazardous substances - but are nevertheless recycled with skill. Moreover, the authorised processing companies which collaborate with Recupel regularly belong to the top companies in the world concerning their expertise in terms of ecological processing of electrical waste.
Economic arguments
When you dispose your discarded appliances correctly, you make it possible that raw materials are filtered from the appliances in order to be processed to something new. Among other, glass, metals, and even the synthetical materials from the electrical waste which is collected via Recupel, are already being recycled for the full 100%. Those are all raw materials which can be perfectly processed into new applications, from copper cables to sleaping bags. And all that without the intervention of classic mining (understand: without further depletion of the Earth).
In that way, already 40% of all steal worldwide, for example, emanates from recycling activities. Of all copper that has ever been mined, 80% is still in circulation. Part of the remaining 20% is undoubtedly catching dust in your cellars or sheds, which is why you should turn it in!
