What is the scheme about?
We’re always looking for innovative ways to increase the number of students we can support, and our new partnership with Genuine Solutions will help the whole UCL community reduce waste and raise vital funds for students.
Only half of our students feel confident they have enough money to meet their basic living costs, and 1 in 4 students are regularly go without food or other necessities. These are challenging times to be a student. Because of this, we’ve established a hardship fund to help students in financial difficulty. The fund is topped up by generous donations, and we’ve already supported students with more than £200,000 of financial support this year.
Search your drawers, ask your friends and family, and gather up all your old phones, cables, tablets, laptops, from January you’ll be able to ethically recycle your e-waste and help students at the same time.
Clearing out your clutter could help us support students to access their education at UCL or help support students in emergency situations like facing homelessness. Our hardship funds also help students access extra-curricular activity, reducing loneliness and improving mental health. Read more about the different hardship funds on offer through the students’ union.
Dos:
- Be conscious of what you donate and think about whether it can be recycled in this scheme. We only accept mobile phones, laptops, tablets & associated accessories like cables, chargers, and headsets.
- Securely remove your data - we securely remove your personal data from your device, but you can help us by preparing the phone or tablet for recycling by checking with your network to see if you need to unlock your phone. Find out how based on your network provider.
- Remove cloud accounts - please note that your device will not be giftable should it be linked to a cloud account (iCloud or Google) as we will be unable to unlock it. You’ll need to ensure that you remove any or these accounts from your device. If you are unsure how to do this, simply follow the instructions here.
Don'ts:
- Donate tech that doesn’t sit within our list of donatable items - we’re looking for mobile phones, laptops, tablets & associated accessories like cables, chargers, and headsets.
- Bring bags, cases, boxes and other packaging or casing - we can't recycle it and it contaminates the donations.
About Genuine Solutions
Genuine Solutions are multi-award-winning experts in the recovery and distribution of mobile technology.
Genuine Solutions offer a smarter, safer, more sustainable way of recovering and purchasing smart devices and accessories. So far, they recovered and distributed over 88 million mobile devices and accessories, preventing 9,000 tonnes of unwanted electrical waste ending up in landfill - this is the equivalent to 711 double decker buses!
Over 96% of all products processed by Genuine Solutions are recovered, avoiding unnecessary waste from landfill. From those products that are unable to be recovered, they harvest as many components as possible, so they can be reused in the recovery of other mobile devices and accessories.
Genuine Solutions' quality assurance is underpinned by the framework of ISO, providing a consistent and sustainable approach to governance.