British-owned electronics retail shop Currys has banned customers from submitting second-hand electronic sex toys for the company’s e-waste recycling scheme, but says it is “working hard” to be able to accept them in the future.
Currys, which sells electronics in the UK and Ireland in physical stores and online, runs an electronics recycling initiative called Cash for Trash. The scheme rewards customers handing over old tech devices with store credit, usually to the value of £5 per item submitted. Since launching in March 2022, over 46,500 tonnes of e-waste has reportedly been recycled through Cash for Trash.
The company recently banned sex toys from being submitted to Cash for Trash, after suggesting that some customers had been attempting to voucher-up with their unwanted sextech devices.
However, when announcing the ban, Currys suggested that it was working on a way to accept sex toys into the scheme in the future.
A Currys spokesperson told CoventryLive: “From electric neon signs and caravan porta-loos to typewriters and Betamax players, almost anything you can think of can be recycled by our specialists, but please hang onto your sex toys a little while longer!”
Guidelines on Currys’ Cash for Trash web page now state: “Please don’t bring in any sensitive or unhygienic items. Or our colleagues may blush.”
With awareness of sustainability issues rising quickly among the public in recent years, the environmental effects of sex toy products has become more discussed in the sextech industry. In 2021 the US website Squeaky Clean Toys was launched, offering a marketplace to trade (thoroughly cleaned and scrubbed) secondhand sex toys.
“Over half of the population owns sex toys, can you imagine the mountain of these that aren’t being used? We’re only doing a tiny thing here. But when you feel you could do something, why not?” one of the site’s owners told Motherboard.
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