Is legislation required?

Optimistic estimates claim about 5 per cent of electronic waste in Australia is disposed of in an environmentally responsible fashion, while some industry experts suggest less than half of this figure escapes landfill. Either way, there's very serious room for improvement but what is going to drive this change? Should the government step in and legislate, are incentives the answer or will simply making facilities available be enough?

DPI Systems' Michael Blumentals argued ease of use would be the most important nut to crack and suggested there was little need for iron-fisted legislation or flashy incentives.

"I'm not entirely sure whether it requires legislation or incentives. If you go back a few years we saw the replacement of a single domestic rubbish bin with separate ones for paper and cardboard, bottles and general waste. That made it easy and nobody had to legislate because councils were able to make it easy enough to do the right thing," he said. "I think business would follow suit if there was an easy way of disposing of old assets like monitors, printers and PCs."

Legislation is the domain of the weak, according to Datacom's Mark McWilliams, although he admitted society sometimes needed it. Rather than passing laws, he would prefer the government to make it attractive for companies to do the right thing.

"Incentives would allow organisations to innovate and add a bit of value around the edges," he said. "If the government legislates, everybody will have a knee-jerk reaction and respond as cheaply as they can. They will look to cut corners.

"It's an awful thing to say, and the government doesn't take it well, but maybe a company that demonstrated it was carbon neutral should attract tax breaks. That would provide an incentive whereas legislation is essentially a negative behaviour."

While dangling tax carrots is likely to grab attention in the corporate world, Vigil Tech's Peter Robinson argued legislation would be the only effective method of driving broad environmental responsibility. While there might be a sense of moral obligation today, the majority of companies would not respond until it impacted their budget.

"I think it really needs legislative change. If companies can't see economic benefit they will need to be told they have to do it," Robinson said. "The environment is a strong election issue but we are not seeing that with respect to IT. I think the government needs to take some interest and provide guidance for mid-market businesses."

Astron Technology's John Deacon drew comparison with environmental issues and regulatory compliance. He agreed that legislation was the way forward.

"A lot of clients are saying the same thing and it's a little bit like Sarbanes-Oxley. Over in the US everything is regulated but here it's a guideline," he said. "It really needs government to take a stance, and tell companies that want to do business with government that they will need to be green compliant and demonstrate some methodologies around their business.

"Or for the government to tell corporates of a certain size, who are doing certain things, that they need to demonstrate environmental responsibility."

Deacon said Astron clients tendering for multi-million dollar government tenders were increasingly asking for guidance on the exact meaning of disposal clauses.

"We tell them about technology platforms, how we deliver them and how we tidy up a project after completion for the government with regard to disposal," he said. "Once this starts to get legislated, we will see it steamroll. We all need to be organised from an IT perspective to make sure we are ready for it."