I just took two solid 1960s pieces of technology to the tip (sorry, 'Household Waste Recycling Centre'). They'd been sitting around for ages, with no interest on the classifieds or Freecycle, and are outside my areas of interest. In moments like this it's frustrating being in Cornwall as it's too far to reasonably deliver or have something collected unless the interested party is in the same county. Charity shops won't take them because 'we don't do electricals', and the man in the new re-use shop at the tip couldn't take them because 'we have no-one to PAT them'. He said they had a container of electricals that are too good to dump or crush, but they can't get the company to pay for a tester and operator.
I was under the impression that PAT had retired, with more emphasis on visual checks and a different testing regimen, but I have no experience in this area. I repair quite a lot for friends and family, and volunteer at the local Repair Café. I'm quite competent at ensuring Class I and Class II equipment is at least as safe as it was when manufactured. I know there were two extremes of PAT, with one group simply operating a machine with no knowledge and slapping stickers on (sometimes trying an earth test on double-insulated equipment, which then fails and is dumped etc.), and the other being highly competent and skilled at solving obscure faults.
In this era where there is a lot of discussion about the 'right to repair' and the increasing awareness of the mountains of useable equipment that gets dumped, what are the regulations on this? Are the tips and charity shops simply worried about grasping litigation (a sorry state of modernity, whether real or an imagined bugbear) or is there a requirement for these objects to pass some kind of test before being reused? Since it's impossible to write a schema for all possible electronics, this would rely on intelligent, skilled and experienced engineers rather than box-tickers, who can appreciate possible faults and know what is worth testing for.
From my volunteering experience, the vast majority of faults are really, really minor for someone with the right knowledge. Shortening a frayed flex turns a dangerous lamp fit to be skipped back into a useful piece of furniture, but it's that sort of repair that seems to be too scary for our recyclers to take on. It's very frustrating seeing the giant skip full of probably basically-working things when doing the recycling, and thinking that it'll probably be leaching into the groundwater soon, or lock away rare-earth metals. The waste of embodied energy and petrochemicals is enormous.
Sometimes there is no fault at all. Only the other week I met a woman about to dump a dehumidifier, and when I asked if it were working she didn't know. She was simply clearing it out of her parents' house and hadn't turned it on. It's now in use at my parents' place as there was nothing wrong with it that a wipe with a damp cloth didn't cure.
To finish my story, I asked one of the tip men and they agreed they were far too good to get dumped, so suggested I secrete my objects in the back of a container. One of their colleagues who was currently ill would be interested in putting them to use...
I was under the impression that PAT had retired, with more emphasis on visual checks and a different testing regimen, but I have no experience in this area. I repair quite a lot for friends and family, and volunteer at the local Repair Café. I'm quite competent at ensuring Class I and Class II equipment is at least as safe as it was when manufactured. I know there were two extremes of PAT, with one group simply operating a machine with no knowledge and slapping stickers on (sometimes trying an earth test on double-insulated equipment, which then fails and is dumped etc.), and the other being highly competent and skilled at solving obscure faults.
In this era where there is a lot of discussion about the 'right to repair' and the increasing awareness of the mountains of useable equipment that gets dumped, what are the regulations on this? Are the tips and charity shops simply worried about grasping litigation (a sorry state of modernity, whether real or an imagined bugbear) or is there a requirement for these objects to pass some kind of test before being reused? Since it's impossible to write a schema for all possible electronics, this would rely on intelligent, skilled and experienced engineers rather than box-tickers, who can appreciate possible faults and know what is worth testing for.
From my volunteering experience, the vast majority of faults are really, really minor for someone with the right knowledge. Shortening a frayed flex turns a dangerous lamp fit to be skipped back into a useful piece of furniture, but it's that sort of repair that seems to be too scary for our recyclers to take on. It's very frustrating seeing the giant skip full of probably basically-working things when doing the recycling, and thinking that it'll probably be leaching into the groundwater soon, or lock away rare-earth metals. The waste of embodied energy and petrochemicals is enormous.
Sometimes there is no fault at all. Only the other week I met a woman about to dump a dehumidifier, and when I asked if it were working she didn't know. She was simply clearing it out of her parents' house and hadn't turned it on. It's now in use at my parents' place as there was nothing wrong with it that a wipe with a damp cloth didn't cure.
To finish my story, I asked one of the tip men and they agreed they were far too good to get dumped, so suggested I secrete my objects in the back of a container. One of their colleagues who was currently ill would be interested in putting them to use...
so i rapped it in .when i did used to do it i just charged 40 quid an hour and not by an item
eveyone and his dog is doing it now and touting for business
thats funny my radio plugged in didnt go off 
