Welcome back to Ask Giz, Gizmodo Australia’s fortnightly series where we answer reader-submitted questions from all across the worlds of science, tech, and health.
If you’ve got a burning question you’d love us to answer, then shoot it on over on the submissions page.
Today’s question comes from Davo in Cheltenham. Davo wants to know: What should I do with the giant tub of obsolete cables I have in the garage?
That’s a brilliant question. Let’s get stuck into this one.
What do I do with all of my old, unused cables?
There’s actually a really simple solution to your unused cable woes: official recycling programs. According to Planet Ark’s Recycling Near You website, The National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme also includes computer cables.
The Recycling Near You website is actually a terrific resource for doing away with any of your old electronics. By typing in your postcode, you can be prompted with several nearby locations where you can drop off unused electronics and cables to recycle, or see nearby businesses that can come pick your unused tech up. You should also have a Community Recycling Centre near where you live, where you can drop off your unused electronics and cables. These centres will usually be listed on your local council’s website – distance to the recycling centre obviously varies depending on where your home is and where the centre is. You’ll also need to check opening hours.
It’s also worthwhile booking a council cleanup, although be aware that councils across Australia tend to handle bulky pickups separately from each other, and that rules may differ from place to place (read up on your local council’s website to see how you’d need to handle a cleanup) and you may not have enough to justify the endeavour.
But we’ve jumped right to recycling, haven’t we? We haven’t even addressed the fact that your cables are likely obsolete and unused because of this. I can relate: I have tonnes of Micro and Mini USB cables in my cabinet of electronics that I don’t use, simply because most of the things that use them… Don’t anymore. They’ve all moved on to USB-C, however, you may still be using some electronics that use older cable types (such as the PS4 controller, which uses Micro USB, or external hard drives, which may use Mini USB) – for this reason, keeping a spare handy isn’t a terrible idea.
If you’re not using any tech that uses any of the cables you’ve got in your storage space, then I’m sorry to say that it might be best to simply recycle the cables and settle on the fact that you’re not going to use them. If you’ve got friends and family that still use a specific cable type for their phone or another appliance, then great! It might be worthwhile passing it on to them, but this will become less likely as time goes on, and as cable standards are updated.
But if it’s just an old standard that you haven’t used in years, then it might be time to get rid of the clutter.
Alternatively to all of this, if you really think you’ll put those cables to use one day, then it might be worthwhile investing in a dedicated storage container. Leaving the cables loose and tangled in a tub means it’ll be painful whenever you try to remove a cable for a purpose, so something that’s worth doing is getting a dedicated storage box (such as this one on Amazon). Sometimes, like the linked Amazon item, these boxes will come with cable management ties, which let you bundle the cable up without tangling it.
Sorry there’s not a fun answer for this one, Davo. Giving those cables a recycle might just be the best thing to do.
Cables: managed
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Ask Giz is a fortnightly series where we answer your questions, be it tech, science, gadget, health or gaming related. This is a reader-involved series where we rely on Gizmodo Australia’s audience to submit questions. If you have a question for Giz, you can submit it here. Or check out the answer to our last Ask Giz: How Many Satellites Are There in Space?