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Headphones Brand Urbanz Initiation Recycle Scheme

Urbanz ethically recycles faulty or broken headphones to those that want to be green.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge based headphones brand wants to increase the awareness of their Recycle Your Headphonesscheme to enable ethically minded people the opportunity to send broken or faulty headphones to them to dispose using certified recycling agents.

First set-up in 2013, the recycle scheme came about as the brand were in discussions with waste management agencies about ethically disposing their broken and faulty headsets and thought it would be great to offer customers the opportunity to do the green thing, and recycle any of their old and broken headphones (in any brand) when an order was placed. A stand-alone website has since been established, www.RecycleYourHeadphones.com, to manage all requests to send faulty ear-wear for recycling and runs independently from the brand to allow anyone to access. Now we want to extend the scheme to everyone so you don’t even need to buy a headphone from us.

Urbanz’s marketing manager James Ireland whom initiated the scheme wanted to set-up a scheme where people had a route to recycle; “Whilst recycling one pair of headphones may not seem like much of a big deal, if we all did it then it would make a massive difference. A lot of people, me included initially, are ignorant to the fact that when we dispose of an electronic good in household waste that it eventually goes into landfill and could cause harm to the environment. So at Urbanz we have set-up a scheme where people now have the option to send headphones to us, knowing that they will be ethically disposed of and that they’ve done something green”.

Why it is important to recycle your headphones:

  • According to GFK data over 280,000,000 million headphones are sold each year worldwide. Headphones can break or become faulty, with most thrown away.

  • A study by United Nations University reveals that by 2017 all of our e-waste added together would fill a line of 40 ton lorries all the way to Australia and most of the way back.

  • Most e-waste, which includes headphones, goes to landfill in poor and developing countries and as time passes the landfill contaminates the land, water and air which develop into illness and infection.

If you have a faulty set of headphones or earphones and would like to ethically dispose of them then visit www.RecycleYourHeadphones.com to request return information. For every 500 headphones received through this scheme then Urbanz will donate £100 to the Young People's Trust for the Environment, www.ypte.org.uk. The YPTE is a UK based organisation that wants to give young people a real awareness of environmental problems, such as climate change, disappearing wildlife, the pollution of soil, air and water, the destruction of rainforests and wetlands, the spread of desert regions and the misuse of the oceans; a worthy cause that has an apt link to the campaign.

Notes to editor:

Urbanz was founded in 2009 with the simple aim of bringing affordable colour and design to the headphones industry without losing the quality. Urbanz is now sold in 5000+ stores, spanning 40 countries. All products are covered under a 1 year warranty with a lifetime warranty being available when an product is registered using the brand website warranty


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