What To Do With Your Old Microwave

In this post, we’ll be running through how to responsibly dispose of your old microwave oven and why. We’ll explain how our own appliance disposal service works if you want to use it, and detail how to dispose of your microwave oven yourself if you’d prefer.

Why Should You Responsibly Dispose Your Old Microwave?

The threat of climate change is becoming too large for anyone to ignore. The clamour surrounding it has reached a fever pitch as 98% of scientists around the world agree that climate change is being aggressively accelerated by our own actions and habits, with the consensus generally being that may now have only ten years to attempt to reverse a catastrophic climate event. 

Old appliances come under the umbrella term of electronic waste or ‘e-waste’. The amount of e-waste being produced is growing year on year and 2018 saw 49.8 million metric tons of e-waste produced around the world.

E-waste is releasing toxins like mercury, chlorofluorocarbons and lead into the natural world, when it’s not disposed of properly. Not only that, but precious metals are going to waste too. Gold and silver are present as well as iron, palladium, copper and more, to the tune of an estimated 52 billion dollars worth.

Around 60% of e-waste is coming from household appliances like microwave ovens. It’s more important than ever to make sure you are responsibly disposing of your electronic waste. There are materials and components that can be recycled, raw materials that can be salvaged and harmful substances can be controlled and not left to ruin the natural environment.

Appliance City’s Recycling Service

Before we detail how to recycle yourself, we’re going to talk briefly about the recycling service that we offer ourselves. We have a dedicated Recycling section which gives you the full details, but we’ll briefly summarise what we can offer here.

  • For £19.99, we will take your old appliance upon delivery of your new one and recycle it on your behalf. Find out more

We understand that sometimes we end up not disposing of our electronics properly through a gap in knowledge or not understanding the severity of the problem.

Managing a household is busy and hard work, so let us deal with the hassle for you, for the small price of £19.99. When delivery is free to the majority of the UK, you can spend what you saved on delivery on helping the environment.

Unbeatable convenience and speed. Save money on a brand-new Microwave from a top, market-leading brand when you buy online today. Free delivery available to the majority of the UK. Shop now!

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How To Dispose of Your Microwave Responsibly

To dispose of your microwave oven or any electronic waste responsibly, head to the RecycleMore website to find the closest recycling centre to you. Head down there with everything you need to recycle and they’ll handle the rest.

Microwaves come under small household appliances and here’s how they are recycled:

  1. After you’ve taken it to your closest recycling centre they are taken to a hammer mill, where they are smashed and broken down into bits.
  2. The fragments are put on a conveyor belt and sorted by ferrous and non-ferrous materials. Ferrous metals are magnetic so these are easily sorted. A vacuum will suction any light debris off of the fragments too, like dirt.
  3. Some components contain both ferrous and non-ferrous metals, these are collected at manual picking points on the recycling journey.
  4. Any batteries are removed and all the material that can be collected is sent to specialists. The plastic will go to a specialist company for further refinement and the metals head to smelters.

Recycled household small appliances help to produce:

  • Electric Motors
  • Cardboard
  • Batteries
  • Circuit Boards
  • Raw Materials (Metals, Plastics)

As you can see, there’s lots of value in recycling your electronics.

If you need a new microwave, head over to our Cooking section to browse from our wide and varied range. Shop our Samsung Microwaves, our esteemed Bosch Microwave Ovens and more. We only stock brands that we know and trust and are confident will do a job for you.

We also have Combination Microwaves and Microwaves With Grills for you to browse. Our Recycling page gives you all the details on how we can dispose of your old microwave oven responsibly for you. With free delivery to the majority of the UK and competitive prices, you can save money when you buy today at Appliance City!

Check out more of our helpful microwave oven guides: