How to maximise your income
No one likes to waste money, particularly when that money can be used to help other people, so over the years that we have run this scheme we have found some common misconceptions that often reduce the effectiveness of the scheme. This page is intended to give you more information to help improve the scheme's effectiveness and hence maximise the income your charity/group can generate.
Best types of CD and DVD
People often ask what proportion of CDs and DVDs are recyclable and what are the best types. It is easy to think that the most recent CDs and DVDs are the best to recycle, or that any CD and DVD is recyclable with this process. These are 2 of the most common misconceptions.
What makes a CD or DVD compatible with this process is its baseline commercial value after it has gone through all the stages of recycling. CDs and DVDs that come free with newspapers and magazines have no commercial value, therefore they are incompatible with this scheme. Likewise data CDs and blank CDs have no commercial value.
However, an old CD that has a very scratched surface, broken case and may not even work properly may seem as though it is worthless. Yet once this disc has been through all the various stages of our recycling process it is often the case that it does have a commercial value.
Without understanding this people can often discard the most recyclable CDs and DVDs and collect in the most incompatable ones, greatly reducing the effectiveness of the scheme. To help make the scheme effective for you, try to ask of each CD - was this bought originally? If it was, then chances are it will be compatible. Don't worry about the physical appearance of the disc and casing, let our specialist recycling process take care of that.
Special Note:
CD singles are usually not compatible with this process. If you wish to send in CD singles, please be aware that they have a much higher likelihood of being incompatible than CD albums.
Due to the potential of receiving illegal copies of CDs and DVDs please note that we are now only able to accept CDs and DVDs that come in their original cases. If you send in just the discs themselves we will be unable to accept these.
Also we are only able to accept a maximum of 10 copies of each album or film you send in. For instance if you have 100 copies of The Kooks album, we would only be able to accept 10 of them. This is because the scheme is designed principally to help charities and voluntary groups, not to help manufacturers dispose of large volumes of unwanted stock.
