Can I recycle my old hearing aids?
You certainly can! There are lots of wonderful projects happening around the world that would love to repair, refurbish and send overseas your old hearing aids for reuse in a developing country. If you do have any old hearing aids in drawers at home do speak to your audiologist first. If you have old NHS hearing aids your audiologist may need to take them back if they are no longer needed (NHS hearing aids are not the property of the wearer – they remain the property of the NHS and are technically on loan to you!) However, if the NHS doesn’t want them back then they may already be a collection point for old hearing aids. If they don’t take back old hearing aids then you can pop them into a collecting bin at your local GP surgery if they have one, or in one in a high street shop, such as a hearing aid dispenser (for example Specsavers Hearcare collect old hearing aids for Sound Seekers) and charity shops (for example Help the Aged or Age Concern). If you can’t find somewhere nearby then you can post you old hearing aids to Help the Aged’s Hearing Aid Appeal or The Hearing Care Centre in Suffolk who will donate them to Lions International.
And what about old audiology equipment?
I get asked this quite a lot, so I keep a list of charities and organisations that carry out humanitarian ENT and audiology work around the world. You’ll find the list here and I’m sure one of them will be delighted to make use of it!
Finally, an appeal for textbooks
This appeal was made in Feb 2012 via the BAA Facebook Group for second-hand textbooks:
“If you know anyone who could help with a donation of second-hand specialist textbooks could you kindly ask them if they’d be willing to give us a helping hand… anybody in the department or perhaps a doctor in ENT?
We are in need of textbooks on any relevant subject… otology, audiology, otorhinolaryngology, general anatomy and physiology, pathology, human biology, embryology, genetics, microbiology, general medicine, pharmacology, acoustics, hearing aids, speech pathology, speech and language therapy, etc., etc, etc.)
Even if it’s just a single book… every book helps… to build a library!
The address in the UK for sending them is as follows:
All Ears Cambodia
21 St. George’s Drive
Brinsworth
South Yorkshire
S60 5NG
Yours
Glyn Vaughan
Director
All Ears Cambodia
info@allearscambodia.org
http://www.allearscambodia.org”;
And if you know of any other humanitarian projects that I should add to the list please let me know!
