It was a real honour to be asked to officially open the new Revaulit store by cutting the recycled cable this morning!

The store is Brighton & Hove’s first ‘pay what you can’ shop for refurbished electricals.

Since 2020, Tech-Takeback has been collecting Brighton and Hove’s unwanted gadgets, refurbishing them and re-distributing them to schools, charities and families. So far, they’ve collected more than 30,000 items and passed on more than 6,500 refurbished devices to their charity partners.

The work this organisation does makes a valuable contribution to our vision of a circular economy in Brighton & Hove by preventing stuff going into landfill and protecting the environment. As a member of the Council’s Circular Economy Working Group, this is something that’s close to my heart and I know, to many of yours too.

We all buy things from time to time that we no longer use – remember that ice-cream maker, bread-maker or where did that old TV go to when you bought a new one? All these things can be given a new lease of life.

If you want to free up some storage space at home, get up in that loft, clamber into the back of that understairs cupboard and scramble around in the shed – gather all your old cables, leads, old laptops, phones and other devices and donate them to be refurbished and re-used.

All the items are PAT tested so only things that are safe to use make it onto the shop’s shelves.

The team told me that if the item can’t be re-used in its current form, then it can be stripped for parts and sometimes used to repair another item.

It’s a wonderful project and something many of us can contribute to during our Spring Clean!

Revaluit are looking for volunteers, so if this is a project you’d like to help with, pop into the shop at 12 Pavilion Parade, BN1 1EE to find out more. Or visit www.techtakeback.co.uk