Donate Small Electricals & Phones in Nottingham | Free Collection

Nottingham households get through electricals faster than most people realise — a city of around 323,000 people upgrading phones, laptops and kitchen gadgets means a steady trickle of perfectly good devices ending up forgotten in cupboards. Anglo Doorstep Collections picks these up straight from your door, anywhere across the city, so your old but working tech gets a second life instead of gathering dust, and the proceeds go on to support good causes.

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Why Nottingham households choose a doorstep collection

A few of the reasons this service works well across the city

What counts as a working electrical

The one rule that matters most: it has to switch on and function

We only take electricals that are in working order, because the whole point is that someone else gets real use from them. A phone with a cracked-but-functioning screen is fine; a phone that won’t power on at all isn’t something we can take. Mobile phones and smartphones of every generation, tablets and e-readers, laptops and desktop PCs with their keyboards and mice, headphones and speakers, toasters, kettles and blenders, hairdryers and straighteners, hand power tools such as drills and sanders, and digital cameras and radios are all things we’re glad to collect across Nottingham, Arnold, Carlton, Beeston and Long Eaton. We’re not able to take TVs, printers, microwaves, lamps or light bulbs, tower fans, sewing machines, record players, or large appliances like washing machines and fridges — these fall outside what this collection is set up to handle.

Preparing your items

A few minutes of prep makes everything easier for the next owner

Before anything goes in the bag, give it a quick test to confirm it still switches on and works as it should. For phones, tablets and laptops, take a moment to sign out of accounts, run a factory reset and remove the SIM card and any memory card — this protects your data and means the next owner can start using the device straight away without any of your information left on it. Keep each charger and cable paired with its device rather than loose in a drawer, since a laptop without its charger is far less useful to whoever receives it next. Wrap anything with a screen in newspaper or bubble wrap, pack everything into a sturdy bag or box, and label it clearly for the driver so there’s no confusion on collection day.

How the collection itself works

Simple, doorstep and entirely hands-off

Booking takes a couple of minutes online, where you can choose a convenient day and pick which of our partner charities you’d like your donation to support. Once your items are packed, working and labelled, you don’t need to stay in — leave them on the doorstep, in the porch or wherever is safe and dry, and let us know in the booking notes exactly where to find them. We’ll text your collection time slot the evening before, so there’s no guesswork and no long wait at home.

What happens after we collect

Reuse first, responsible recycling where reuse isn’t possible

Once collected, working electricals are channelled towards reuse wherever possible, either resold to raise funds for charity or passed on to someone who needs them — either way, a large percentage of proceeds goes to charity. Items that can’t be reused outright are sent for proper recycling, which recovers carbon-intensive metals such as copper, aluminium and small amounts of gold that would otherwise be wasted. This matters more than it might seem: the UK generates around 1.6 million tonnes of electrical waste every year, among the highest amounts per person anywhere in the world, and an estimated 880 million unused electrical items are currently sitting unused in homes across the country. Roughly 103,000 tonnes of electricals are thrown straight into household bins annually, and globally only 22% of e-waste is properly collected and recycled, according to the Global E-waste Monitor 2024. Electricals left to landfill can leak harmful materials into the ground, while reusing a working item avoids the heavy carbon cost of manufacturing a brand-new replacement — small decisions at the doorstep genuinely add up.

Thinking beyond the gadget drawer

Reducing consumption, one working device at a time

Most of us don’t think of an old phone or a spare kettle as waste — it’s just something sitting in a cupboard “in case it’s needed.” But multiplied across a city the size of Nottingham, those drawers add up to a genuine resource. Choosing to pass an item on rather than replace it with something new is one of the more effortless forms of sustainable living available, and it means fewer raw materials need to be mined and manufactured in the first place. Nottingham City Council and the wider county both encourage residents to reduce what goes to landfill, and doorstep donation is one of the easiest ways to do that without changing your routine at all.

More to donate while you’re at it

One visit can cover far more than electricals

A clear-out of old tech often turns up other things worth donating. We also collect clothes, linen and towels, books, toys, household items and kitchenware in Nottingham, all on the same visit. You can check the full list of places we cover on our collections near you page, or see everything we collect across the county on our collections across Nottinghamshire page.