Questions:

Q. What is Collect4Uni?
A. Collect4Uni is a scheme to raise money for your student organisation by collecting empty printer cartridges and old mobile phones for recycling. It is run alongside other Collect4 schemes

Q. Why should we join the Collect4Uni scheme?
A. About 75% of homes have printers, and if you add this to the numbers of office and I.T. room printers too, the UK gets through a lot of printer cartridges. In fact, we throw 31 million plastic printer cartridges a year into UK landfill sites. They take hundreds, even thousands of years to biodegrade! When you consider that many printer cartridges can be cleaned and reused you start to get a picture of how much is being wasted - and how much damage is being done to our environment.

Most of us replace our mobile phones every 18 months but they have an average life span of 8 years. Because of this, about 90 million phones are currently unused in the UK. This too is a waste. They contain dangerous substances and shouldn't be left unused for too long. Instead, they could be patched up and sent to a developing country, making a huge difference to someone else's life. Collect4Uni is just one of the ways in which you can do something to limit this waste and damage to the environment. Remember, we pay you for your cartridges and phones, so your University benefits too.

Q. How does the Collect4Uni scheme work?
A. We will provide you with collection boxes or you may choose the 'green option' and reuse a suitable box or container you already have. You simply put them in a prominent place and ask pupils and staff to deposit their empty cartridges and old mobile phones into them. Please make sure that mobile phones are sealed in a bag so that they can't get inky! When you have at least one full collection box, contact us and we will arrange a free collection. We will pay you for each item returned that we can recycle. It costs nothing to be involved in the scheme.

Q. How do we know which cartridges to collect?
A. You simply collect all types of printer cartridge. We can pay you for the ones that can be refilled and resold. Unfortunately, as of yet not all cartridges can be refilled and sometimes the cost of refillling some is approximately equivalent to the costs involved in the collection and recycling process. We will take all cartridges you collect to our centre and sort them. We will then pay you varying amounts for those which we can refill. The rest will be recycled into other plastic products so it is still worth sending us everything. Inside the log in section you will find a table detailing which cartridges we can pay you for and how much we will give you for each type of cartridge.

Q. How do we know which mobile phones to collect?
A. You can send us all types of mobile phone (with the chargers if you have them). If the phones can't be reconditioned and sent to developing countries, they will be broken down into their component parts and disposed of safely. We can pay you for any phones that can be reconditioned and hence have a new life. Inside the log in section you will find a table detailing which mobile phones we can pay you for and how much we will give you for each type of mobile phone.

Q. Do you only recycle printer cartridges and mobile phones?
A. At the moment we specialise in recycling printer cartridges and mobile phones (with their accessories). So please don't include paper, photocopier toner bottles, fax rolls or ribbons of any kind. Fax rolls may contain sensitive information and should be destroyed on site. Please don't send home or office landline phones as we can only recycle mobile phones.

Q. How can we promote the scheme?
A. Our web site provides resources to help you with this and our staff are always ready to give you advice if you contact us. The web site contains poster designs that you can download, print and photocopy to distribute around your University.

Q. What are the other Collect4 schemes?
A. Collect4School is a very similar scheme to Collect4Uni, operating in schools. Collect4Charity is a scheme where charities can collect through their network of individual and corporate supporters. Collect@Work is a scheme associated with Collect4School and Collect4Charity where parents of pupils can boost school funds or workers can raise money for charity by collecting in the work place.

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