nearly everyone gets a router when they sign up to a broadband deal. nine times out of ten, whether they need one or not. so most homes end up with a perfectly good box in a drawer, and another one on the shelf doing the actual work.
that is a lot of kit for something that mostly just sits there and blinks. here is how to work out whether the one you have is still up to the job, and what to do with it if it is not.
the cupboard problem
spare routers sitting unused in uk homes. enough to fill ten olympic swimming pools
of households have at least one they are not using. one in seven have two or more
said they simply did not know how to recycle an old one
figures from uswitch. across everything, uk homes and businesses throw out more than a million tonnes of electrical waste a year.
has the old one still got a job in it?
every earth plan comes with a router, set up for your line and ready to go. this is about the one already in the cupboard. if all four of these are true it is still a working router, so pass it on or find it a second home rather than binning it.
the maker is still sending it security fixes. that is the one that really matters.
it gave a decent signal in the rooms that were used. if it managed that in one house, it will manage it in another.
it was getting roughly the speed the plan promised. if it was, there is plenty of life in it yet.
it can plug into whatever brings broadband into your house. on full fibre that is the white box on the wall.
when it is worth swapping
and here is when hanging on to it stops being the greener choice.
this is the big one. since april 2024, makers selling in the uk have had to say plainly how long a product will get security updates. once that date passes, anything found in it stays broken.
if you pay for 500mbps and the router tops out at a fraction of that, you are paying for something you cannot receive.
some older kit simply cannot plug into a fibre connection. we will tell you if yours is one of them.
if there is a room where nothing works, that is a real problem and worth fixing. it might be a better router, or it might just be where it is sitting.
the one you are not using
the drawer is not the answer either. three things, in order.
check who owns it. most provider routers are on loan rather than yours to keep, and plenty of companies charge if you do not send them back. they get refurbished and reused, which is the best outcome for it. bt took back over a million pieces of kit in one year and put half a million of them back into service, keeping 170 tonnes out of landfill.
wipe it before it leaves the house. a router is a small computer. it knows your wi-fi password, your network settings, and any parental controls you set up. hold the reset pin in until the lights blink, then it is blank.
then recycle it properly. nearly every council tip takes small electricals, and plenty of supermarkets and high street shops have a bin for them. what it must not go in is the household waste.
the greenest router is the one already sitting on your shelf, still getting updates, doing its job. a new one is only greener if the old one has genuinely run out of road.
common questions
your plan includes an earth router as standard. using the router we supply gives you access to our feature-rich mobile app, making it easy to manage and get the most from your broadband service. we understand that some customers may prefer to use their own router, and that is absolutely fine. just contact our support team and they will be happy to provide the connection details you need to get your own equipment set up. the router setup guide walks through adding a router to the app.
look for the model number on the label underneath, then search that plus "support period" or "end of support". makers publish the dates per model, not per range, so the exact number matters.
it can be, once the maker stops sending updates. up to that point it is fine. after it, any hole that turns up stays open, and your router is the thing every device in the house talks through.
only if the old one was the bottleneck. if your plan is 500mbps and your router tops out well below that, yes. if you are on a modest plan and the wi-fi reaches every room, a new one will not add a thing.
check whether it belongs to your old provider first, because many are on loan and they want them back. otherwise reset it and take it to a council recycling point. do not put it in the bin.
