Inspired by a satirical internet story about a man who was keeping a drawer of cables and adaptors that "might come in handy", I approached that popular fellow (and environmental warrior) Anthony Roberts at Colchester Arts Centre to see if we could put our heads together and help out our fellow cable hoarders - and the environment at the same time.

We came up with the idea of hosting a Cable Amnesty at Colchester Arts Centre and with a massive advertising budget of zero.

We managed to entice a broad range of good folk from all over Colchester to donate their shoeboxes of not really "handy" cables our way.

The borough council kindly provided us with wheelie bins and promised us that all these "handy" cables, which for most people were just gathering dust, would be recycled appropriately and not sent to landfill.

This, ladies and gents, was our main driver - to responsibly recycle and raise awareness of the issue.

Yes, it meant freeing up some space at home (scart leads and phono cables gone, so now there's room for a couple of Apple chargers and a cheeky gold plated HDMI right?)

But we knew the metals in these cables must have a value and should be recycled and not sent to a hole in the ground.

(Scrap Values for precious metals found in cables and electrical waste are: 1 tonne of scart cables = £1,000, 1 tonne of circuit boards (producing) 80g of gold = £2,500, 1 tonne of old speaker cables (copper) = £3,500.)

The Cable Amnesty proved a hit.

We filled up wheelie bins and had some real nostalgic fun, allowing people to view our carefully curated display of soon to be recycled cables and adapters.

Even the BBC Breakfast News folks came to join us.

That evening, after a large glass of red wine, the mind began to wonder towards dark thoughts, just where had those cables actually gone?

Anthony and I were alone, sat on our sofas, wrestling with the anxiety of not quite knowing the final destination of the cables.

A friend sent me the most horrific video link of a place in Africa (Google: "Welcome to Sodom") where the rubber and plastic from cables are burnt off by children and people, covered in grime and inhaling dangerous toxic fumes,smelt circuit boards to extract gold

It was this image that forced the decent chaps that we are to resolve our anxiety and so we sent some emails seeking clarity.

The borough council was excellent in hooking us up with the people in the business of cable recycling and so we found ourselves committing to visit the Electrical Waste Recycling Centre for Essex and Kent.

Upon arrival it was like a scene out of Star Wars. Mountains of cables and electrical waste on a scale that R2D2 and C3PO could dream of.

Mercury was being extracted from old television sets, circuit boards and computer RAM was piled up ready to be smelted for gold and other precious metals and of course copper was separated from bog-standard steel found in scart cables.

The sheer scale of electrical waste was just enormous.

We probed further and found out the stuff that couldn’t be recycled might end up being incinerated, a process in itself which can produce energy.

However what was worrying was that we learnt the UK is way off hitting its overall electrical waste targets compared to other European countries.

To put it simply, electrical waste which could be stripped down and recycled, is still ending up in landfill.

We all have a responsibility as individuals to recycle our electrical waste, mobile phones, batteries, and cables etc.

They really ought not go into landfill and I’m sure there are ways in which the government, working globally, can help local authorities and just us ordinary gold-plated HDMI cable loving consumers in this endeavour.

We are really interested in your ideas on future cable amnesties, this is a work-in-progress project so please get in touch.

With love from the Cable Guys: Darius G Laws & Anthony Roberts.