It all starts with the phrase "you never know, it might come in handy" and ends in a warning from a structural engineer. Hoarding: endearing, perhaps, but potentially unsafe and paradoxically wasteful.

Take the classic hoarder. Everything that might in an imagined future have value, from old curtains to museum-piece video recorders, get put up in the loft. And there they stay until a decade or two later, when the house is changing hands, the ceiling in the bedroom has cracked and fashion and technology have moved on so far that everything up there is obsolete and useless - at which point it all ends up in the skip. Now, that's no use to anyone.

I raise this now to warn you. See that old analogue telly? Think about it. If you're planning to pop it in the loft, stop. Wouldn't it be better to recycle it?

In Scotland, the digital switchover will take place in 2010-11 and many are seeing it as an opportunity to go out and buy a new TV. You might think this would result in a telly tower to rival the wine lakes and butter mountains of the 1980s. Market research conducted for the government apparently shows that it won't; we'll see. But the important thing to bear in mind is that, with some exceptions, analogue TVs - even black-and-white ones - will not become obsolete after the switchover. They just need a digital box which can be bought for as little as £20.

It's difficult to tell how much of a recycling market there will be for these old tellies, but Freecycle and the Community Recycling Network are good starting points. Of course, a broken or genuinely obsolete TV is little use to anyone and two million are discarded in the UK every year. A lot of electronic equipment contains toxic components that can be harmful to the environment, so the important thing is to dispose of it safely. Thanks to the EU's Waste Electrical and Electronic (WEEE) directive, a "producer responsibility" measure, the obligation to recycle or dispose of electronic goods safely lies with the manufacturer or distributor.

Retailers have two options: they can take back a waste item from customers in-store when selling them an equivalent new item. Alternatively, they can direct customers to a designated collection facility under a distributor takeback scheme.

The company Valpak has been appointed to operate the UK's distributor takeback scheme. Retailers that join must contribute to a fund to pay local authorities to upgrade civic amenity sites put forward as designated collection facilities. Consequently, most Scottish local authority recycling centres have joined up to the scheme to collect WEEE, even though they are not legally obliged to do so, and electronic equipment can be disposed of at these centres free of charge.

In theory, then, it should be easier than ever to dispose of old electronic waste safely. But we'd be interested to hear from any reader who finds that they can't.