Anything with a plug, battery or cable can be reused or recycled. This includes vapes, laptops, mobile phones, electric toothbrushes, games consoles, power tools and shavers.

Vapes and batteries cause fires

Many of our tech and electronic devices, including vapes contain lithium-ion batteries. When crushed these cause fires in our bin lorries and recycling centres.

Never put anything with a lithium-ion battery in your waste or recycling bin.

The most common household items with lithium-ion batteries are

• vapes
• mobile phones
• laptops
• tablets
• digital cameras
• smart watches
• game consoles
• cordless power tools
• electric toothbrushes and shavers
• smart home devices.

Vapes

Never put vapes in our kerbside or communal household waste bins, mixed recycling bins, or street litter bins. They contain poisonous nicotine liquid and the lithium-ion batteries cause fires when crushed.

You can take your vapes to be recycled at

• our household waste recycling centres
• vape stores
• some supermarkets.

Check where you can recycle vapes near you.

Loose batteries

At the library: most of our libraries have battery collection boxes where you can recycle old batteries. We can take AA, AAA and hearing aid batteries, but not the lithium-ion batteries from old laptops or vapes. Check which libraries have battery collection boxes or just ask at the counter.

At home: if you have a kerbside waste collection, you can put loose batteries in a clear bag on top of your glass recycling box. A freezer bag is ideal for this. Just make sure they’re visible to the collection crews.

At the recycling centre: all our recycling centres have battery boxes, as well as vape disposal boxes.

High street shops and supermarkets: many large high street stores and supermarkets have battery recycling boxes and vape disposal boxes.

Check where you can recycle your batteries near you with the easy-to-use postcode sorter.

How to recycle your cables

Save valuable materials like copper in cables from going to waste.

Bag up your old and broken cables and take them to your nearest drop-off point at recycling centres or large supermarkets and stores or donate to Edinburgh Remakery.

Check where you can recycle your cables near you with the easy-to-use postcode sorter.