Needed now: a national scheme to recycle old IT gear

By Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 09 January 2008 14:45

Opinion and Analysis

While the lifetime of computer equipment is rapidly getting shorter Australia is moving only slowly towards a national recycling scheme. Meanwhile in the US, private enterprise has come up with a scheme that gives owners of obsolete equipment some incentive to recycle. Faced the other day with the problem of disposing of a 1999 vintage Apple G3 I contacted my local re-use and recycle co-operative to find that they have given up taking any computers more than five years old, which means there is an awful lot of IT gear in the community that, unless properly recycled will end up as landfill.

Had I owned a Dell and not an Apple, disposal would have been no problem: according to the recycling near you website - run by Planet Ark and Sensis - Dell alone of computer vendors in Australia will pick up its old gear from you at no charge if you are within 40kms of the CBD of major cities.

Meanwhile, the industry as a whole is still trying to come up with a viable national scheme, under the auspices of the AIIA. According to its website, "for the past three years, AIIA has been working closely with member companies to develop a voluntary industry-driven product stewardship strategy to address the environmental management of e-waste at the end of life stage of the product lifecycle. The Association and its member companies have taken responsible action to develop a viable, equitable and sustainable hardware recycling scheme and presented our proposal to government...[in November 2006]...[The proposal] for a voluntary industry-wide scheme is a balanced and sensible approach which will deliver benefits to the community while ensuring no segment of the hardware industry is commercially disadvantaged."

That followed publication in June 2005 of a joint report by the AIIA with Planet Ark: "AIIA - e-waste Program development phase" in which the AIIA  said: "since 2001 AIIA has been actively involved in developing a voluntary industry-driven product stewardship strategy to address the environmental management of e-waste (collection and reprocessing) at the end of life stage of the product life cycle."