By Claire Reilly
When it comes to e-waste recycling, Australia is starting to make big in-roads on the issue of end-of-life electrical products going into landfill. Recycling providers such as the Australia and New Zealand Recycling Platform (ANZRP), DHL Supply Chain and E-Cycle Solutions have been actively signing up new manufacturers over recent months to ensure they meet their obligations under the Federal Government’s National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme.
Since joining with ANZRP in July, Sharp has seen success with the recycling of its end of life products. But Sharp’s national marketing manager, Mark Beard, said Australia still has a long way to go when it comes to recycling e-waste and increasing consumer awareness.
“From day one, Sharp has been pretty heavily involved in the whole recycling issue." said Beard. “The program has met our expectations. But we understood it would be a slow process, because this is something completely different and completely new.
Click here to sign up for our FREE daily newsletter
Follow Current.com.au on Twitter
According to Beard, before the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme was brought in, there were no workplace standards within the recycling industry, and therefore no consistency to the ways products were broken down at end-of-life.
“You could go to one recycler, and there would be a guy with a hammer and a pair of eye shields smashing up products, or a front-end loader crushing up TVs. Then you could go to other recycle sites where they were doing lead extraction. So there was this wide gamut of what recycling was in Australia. There was no standard for that industry at all.
“But the issue came back to too much going into landfill and the potential toxins that would eventually leach over a period of time. As part of the recycling covenant, the Government said there needs to be standards that have to be met. So a recycler that wasn’t meeting certain standards couldn’t be part of the program, and therefore if you want to be part of the program you need to get your act together.
“That, in itself, is a big change in the industry.”
At the end of the day, Beard said a greater level of recycling would come from greater retailer and consumer awareness.
“One of the key things is that the whole recycling covenant is a cost. It’s a cost to the manufacturers – it’s not a user-pays program like they have in Japan, where you take your TV to a site and you pay for the recycling. So there needs to be a greater awareness of it, and that’s one of the bigger challenges for any company, no matter what recycling program they’re with.
“Manufacturers and retailers alike need to promote it, by saying, ‘There’s a service behind this TV; at the end of the life of this TV is not going to go in a hole in the ground. That awareness level is growing, and eventually it will get to the consumer.
“Consumers will probably still hunt around for the best price or whatever it might be, but they should understand that the service being done by the consumer electronics industry is a whole-of-life approach. At the end of the life of the product, it will be recycled and there will be a little bit less pollution getting out there.”