NGO asks Governments to act on IT waste

Non-government organisation, Total Environment Centre (TEC), has launched a campaign for ‘extended producer responsibility’ hoping to rally the NSW government to take action against manufacturers of environmentally harmful computer products.

TEC, a NSW based not-for-profit organisation, said it wanted to send a message to ‘big business’ about the need to create more ‘environmentally friendly’ manufacturing and disposal practices.

As reported in ARN earlier this year, a similar initiative from the state government, led by the Minister for Environment, Bob Debus, identified the issues of waste and the production of recyclable material that has less damage to the environment as one of the top priorities for the IT industry.

Now TEC has said the government should do more, starting with the enforcement of section 15 of the Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery ACT (2001), which introduces shared responsibility for the life cycle of products at every point of the production and consumption chain.

“Regulation has worked in Europe and in Asian countries such as Taiwan and Japan, where recycling rates have increased dramatically,” TEC resource conservation campaigner, Jane Castle, said.

Castle claimed regulation had forced companies in those regions to either take back their products in schemes or to have financial incentives for consumers to return disused computer products.

However, although the local Act regulated environmental impacts of the products from the extraction of virgin materials, to manufacturing, to consumption, and through to the disposal and post-disposal consequences, Castle said the government was not using its powers to enforce it.

Castle said the laws in NSW stated that if waste numbers were not falling, the government could regulate and ensure that companies claimrf products back. But, up until now, the government had not gone beyond formulating the law.

TEC claims more than over 3 million computers are buried in landfill each year. As a result more than 2000 tonnes of hazardous waste such as lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium was being dumped each year.

It was looking at reducing this number by campaigning with manufacturers and importers of IT products to take more responsibility for their recycling and disposal.

Castle praised companies such as Fuji Xerox, which had led the way environmentally by leasing many of its products and equipment, and refurbishing components of used computer products.

However, the organisation agreed that regulating resellers was impossible.