Western Australia’s largest accredited electronic waste recycler is ramping up efforts to cope with a statewide ban on sending e-waste to landfill from next year.
Each day, workers process around 15 tonnes of e-waste, from industrial sized printers and plasma screen TVs to old game consoles at the industrial facility in Perth’s south-eastern suburbs.
Total Green Recycling’s general manager Evan Cocks said the organisation processed the vast majority of e-waste from around the state.
“Last financial year, we received 1,100 tonnes of flat screens. That’s over 28,000 individual flat screens that entered our facility,” he said.
“And 206 tonnes of PCs as well; over 20,000 PCs.”
The initial stage of the ban will include larger household appliances like white goods, mobile phones, computers, batteries, screens and lighting.
With the start date looming, Mr Cocks said there were challenges as well as opportunities for the sector.
“The biggest challenge I see is the amount of work that a lot of local governments are going to have to do to get their systems and infrastructure in place to collect the e-waste,” he said.
According to the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER) only a quarter of the 68,663 tonnes of e-waste generated in WA in 2019-20 was estimated to have been recycled — the rest ends up in landfill.
DWER director of waste avoidance and resource recovery Adrian Wiley is confident the e-waste recycling industry has the potential to manage more waste.
He said $14 million from the state government would fund community education programs and increase capacity to recycle in the lead-up to the ban.
“It includes $10.1 million of grant funding for infrastructure projects that increase collection, storage, reuse, recycling or reprocessing of e-waste materials in Western Australia,” Mr Wiley said.
Of that funding, $6.5 million has already been shared across 21 local e-waste recovery businesses, including not-for-profit organisations that repair and donate old technology to divert about 17,000 tonnes from landfill.
WA Local Government Association (WALGA) state president Karen Chappel said managing e-waste was “expensive and complicated” for councils and costs would be passed on to ratepayers.
“There is not currently an effective product stewardship scheme covering all types of electronic waste,” she said.
“It’s really important to remember that whatever cost is incurred, whether it’s through your rates, whether you’re paying it directly, that’s actually paying for the service of responsibly dealing with that waste stream.
“E-waste cannot go in the yellow bin, that’s one of the biggest misconceptions — it actually represents a significant risk because lithium batteries are highly combustible.”
WA Environment Minister Reece Whitby said each Australian was estimated to be responsible for about 20 kilograms of e-waste per year but confirmed the state government would not penalise households and individuals.
(ABC)
