The challenge of e-waste in the Asia Pacific
Updated
Australia is about to introduce a new national electronic recycling scheme for TVs, computers and other electronic equipment.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Dr Sunil Herat, senior lecturer in Waste Management and Head of the E-waste Research Group, at Griffith University in Queensland
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HERAT: E-waste is a short name for electronic and electrical waste, basically anything with a power plant or a battery which you use and once you're finished with that, it becomes e-waste.
LAM: And why is it so important that we get rid of it properly?
HERAT: There are two issues here; one issue is that the e-waste consists of a lot of toxic materials, so if you don't dispose of them properly that can get into the environment and impact the environment, so that is one issue. The other issue is that e-waste contains a lot of valuable material, which can be recovered. So they're the two issues we have to think about.
LAM: And I understand that large amounts of this so-called e-waste ends up in China and India. How big a problem is it for those countries?
HERAT: It's a major problem and in fact this was highlighted earlier I think in 2002. What's happening is that because it's costly to recyle e-waste in most of the industralised countries, there is a tendency for these items to end up in low labour-cost countries, like China and India. So the problem is huge and there estimates of various amounts. It's very hard to confirm. But the problem is huge, it's not a small problem.
LAM: What about sending computers from developed countries, disused computers, which are no longer in use. What about sending those computers to developing countries to be re-used by schools and small businesses? Does that work?
HERAT: Yeah that was the principle behind; I think you mentioned the re-use of the computers. That's perfectly alright but the situation means that in the name of re-using, the non-operating items can also move that. That's a problem we are confronting now. So if they can be used that's fine but some of these end up in the hands of recyclers who are not doing this properly and they tend to dismantle them rather than re-using them.
LAM: What can you tell us about the Australian government's recycling scheme? How does that work?
HERAT: The Australian government at this point in time we don't have any guidelines. The ministers sat down last Friday to talk about some of these issues and we're still waiting for a release from the government on what happened last Friday. But there's a lot of pressure from industry to formalise the recycling activities here, through some government mechanism like policy or regulation, because what's happening now is the recycling is taking place sort of in an ad hoc way but there's no national direction.
LAM: Just very quickly what about the computer makers themselves, can't they use materials that are perhaps a little bit less harmful?
HERAT: That is exactly right. So what is happening in the EU is that the producers are now banned from using some of these toxic materials by regulation but that's not global and it's only happening in the EU. So hopefully we can do the same thing here.
