e-waste recycling gets closer

Good news on e-waste! A national e-waste recycling scheme was given the go ahead at last week's meeting of the Environmental Heritage Protection Council, made up of Environment Ministers from across the country.

This is a very positive step forward in managing e-waste in Australia. Electronic waste is growing at three times the rate of general waste, filling landfill sites across the country, with the added potential of causing contamination at these sites.

A national e-waste recycling system will see the creation of substantial green jobs in the waste management sector and has been conservatively estimated to be worth $50million per year.

Recycling e-waste has many benefits, recycling would remove heavy metals from landfill sites and also enable the recovery of some of the more scarce materials that go into the make up of electronic equipment.

It's great to see the that the EHPC are listening to the community and to industry, both have a high level of support for electronic recycling, now the important thing is to get the best recycling scheme we can for electronic waste.