How can I recycled/pass on an old, working electric oven?
We’ve had an email from Richard:
We have 4-year-old electric oven in good working order which we would like to donate to a Charity. Any ideas?
We’ll actually in a similar position soon – our (15+ year old) oven works for general cooking but not for the precise/high temperatures we need from it for baking etc, so we’ll be getting a new one in the new year.
It might be hard to find a charity that would accept an oven – due to both its size and for safety reasons. Our plan was to offer it on Freecycle/Freegle, or via our local Gumtree (we’ve had more success with the latter) – passing it directly on to someone who could use it rather than going through a charity.
If you definitely want to pass it through a charity though, my only suggestion would be checking with any local charities that provide furniture or household items for people moving on from homelessness or other precarious situations. I don’t know if they’d take it but Emmaus train formerly homeless people to test & refurbish household items before selling them on, so they might be in a position to take, test and pass it/sell it on.
Does anyone else have any other suggestions for how it can be passed on?
(Photo by MrDeeds
YMCA and British Heart Foundation charity shops also take furniture and our local BHF takes cookers and ovens (as well as other white goods) so they might be a good place to try. Our local council has a system called Open Doors or something like that where your old goods are passed onto those who are in desperate need – might be worth checking out something like that too.
Last year a friend of mine and her neighbor gutted a stove and had plants coming up from the burners, and had plants cascading from the inside of the stove onto the oven door. It was just another one of her green art backyard projects. In fact she also has an old claw tub, pedestal sink and commode as well. She is quite the talk around her community. I told her she needs to charge admission!
I had an old refrigerator to pass on-it needed to be defrosted fairly often, but it worked, and would have been better than no fridge at all for someone in need. And I couldn’t get a charity to take it. It had the rounded corners on top, and that was enough to make them turn it down, marked it as old. Didn’t matter that it worked. Unfortunately, I had to set it out for one of the junk pic up days. This was before I knew about Freecycle, or I would’ve tried that. Good luck with this!
Before you pass it on to replace it with a new one, think about durability.
These older stoves were designed to last and be repaired. Many new ones aren’t with digital this and thats . My old stove is still being used by my ex and it is still a thing of beauty and cooks like a charm. It hold its heat and is reliable.
I have a new one that is constantly having to adjust its heat, it an absolute nightmare to keep clean, and the digital clock and time is at best quirky.
Think twice before retiring what you have.
I have an oven – Hotpoint EW91 halogen, freestanding double oven which I am about to replace.
It works perfectly and I have a home for it to go to.
The lady wanting it is in ‘dire straights’ financially and hasn’t had a working oven for several weeks.
I live in Long Stratton and it is to go to Norwich, Mile Cross area.
Does anybody know if there is there a charitable service out there that would pick up and deliver this oven ?
Please e-mail me on message2jan@hotmail.co.uk. Many thanks
You have the PAT testing issue if you pass it on to a charity shop. But most areas have community recycling social enterprises and they often have workshops who can PAT test.
One of the key issues with anything electronic is the WEEE directive in that it calls for re-use wherever possible.
However, the recent introduction of BS PAS141 adds a voluntary type certification system to any old electronics that you pass on to a charity.
Even then, PAT testing in itself is a mandatory piece of legislation that needs to be carried out by any organisation that sells on old electrical/ electronic equipment to the general public. Not too sure how this ites in with cookers though, as they don’t have a plug and require wiring into a aseperate ring main due to the high current draw.
In terms of recycling, the re-use of the cooker by a charity would take it out of the “recycling” part of the “Waste Hierarchy” a raise it to the re-use level. If instead of passing it on to a Charity, you were to pass it on to a relative, this would raise it further up the “Waste Hierarchy” into the reduce part in that it is not being passed into the waste custody chain (ie there is no reporting back to the Environment Agency by a Charity or other re-use orgainisation), hence it is never counted as waste in the UK’s returns to the European Union.