As Australia gears towards the development of a national scheme to regulate electronic waste, Australian landfills continue to pile up with e-waste – some of which leach into the soil and contaminate the ecosystem. Clarizza Fernandez investigates.

Australia is listed as one of the top ten consumers of electronics in the world.

However management of electronic waste is lagging behind consumer demand, with so called ‘e-waste’ growing three times the rate of general waste, according to a report by the Environment Protection Heritage Council (EPHC).

In 2007/2008 Australians discarded 16.8 million electronic devices, 9 per cent of which was recycled and 88 per cent sent to landfill.

Dr Mariann Lloyd-Smith, chemical management specialist and Senior Advisor at the National Toxics Network (NTN), said the growing amount of e-waste at landfills not only presents environmental and health risks in our own backyards, but also presents the same risks in developing nations through the export of near end-of-life products.

“It sounds as if we’re only dealing with the waste (when the product no longer functions) but what’s happening nowadays is we’re seeing large exports of near end-of-life [electronic] products,” she said.

“These products are often sent with the best of intentions by community groups to villages in Africa or India for the poorer people who haven’t got computers.

“But the reality is these products go to these countries and very quickly become e-waste.”

While the Basel Convention – an international treaty that addresses trans-boundary movement of hazardous waste – and the Hazardous Waste Act 1989 makes the export of hazardous waste to developing countries illegal, export of near end-of-life electronic products flies under the radar.

Functioning second-hand electronics exported to developing countries can end up in scrap metal yards where they are manually dismantled.

Lloyd-Smith said these countries often do not have the facilities or capacity to deal with waste in a sustainable manner.

“To resolve e-waste, it has to be an issue of dealing with your own mess, in your own border,” she said.

“We certainly object to any exporting of any hazardous waste . . . it just isn’t on.

“You can’t dump your problem on somebody else.”

In our own backyards, Dr Lloyd-Smith said it is the leaching of Polybrominated Diphenylethers (PBDEs) or brominated flame retardants in landfills that is of concern.

“One of the biggest issues we have with e-waste is the brominated flame retardants on the circuit boards, plastic casings and cables [of monitors].

“There are a number of electronic companies now who are making public statements about making a commitment to get rid of these chemicals in their products . . . but we have a massive back log . . . and the most common type [of brominated flame retardant] is the most commonly used . . . it is used in nearly all electronics,” she said.

According to a study by the NTN, brominated flame retardants were found to be associated with thyroid hormone disruption, mimic oestrogen, and are associated with cancer and reproductive damage.

Brominated flame retardants leach from cracked components of electronics sent to landfill. Other toxic chemicals such as lead, cadmium and mercury also leach from e-waste.

Brendan Clarke, regional Business Development Manager from SIMS e-recycling, said harmful metals and chemicals are contained within electronics but not necessarily released into the air – it depends on the method of recycling.

“It’s also the nature of how you pull things apart,” Clarke said.

“If you’re melting circuit boards for example, then yes, there would be a lot of chemicals but we don’t do that.

“It’s further downstream where they’re doing the higher level of refinement . . . you would have exposure to the more dangerous side of things.”

In November 2009, the Australian government and the EPHC endorsed the National Waste Policy, a framework legislation addressing sustainable management of e-waste.

A key strategy under the policy is product stewardship. Product stewardship places the responsibility of recycling and recovery on manufacturers and producers during and at end-of-life stages of electronic goods.

According to the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, the framework legislation will have “voluntary, co-regulatory and mandatory components and will provide an enabling mechanism for accreditation and oversight of product stewardship schemes.”

SIMS e-recycling is one such plant where manufacturers of electronics send e-waste to be treated.

Mr Clarke said that currently, the majority of their business comes from local councils and manufacturers of electronics.

“What we’re looking at, as well as diverting from landfill, is also achieving the highest possible recycling and refinement of material so that they’re not used to make secondary products or down-cycled.

“But more so that they’re able to be processed and refined, to be used again as virgin material . . .”

Mr Clarke explains SIMS e-recycling uses a combination of manual and automated methods of dismantling and recovering resources such as metals and gold. Products with glass, batteries and toners are pulled apart and sent to another site while remaining parts are sent through automated shredders.

“Once it comes to us here, we do an initial sort and we pull out any products that have glass, batteries or toner in them – they go off to one side.

“Any other product that doesn’t have any of those items in it, they go off to be shredded through the automated shredding process.

“Now the CRTs [cathode ray tube] (from old TVs and monitors) all their materials . . . the whole process is manual for that so from your normal CRTs, we would get the plastic casing, the cables that are inside as well as the circuit board, the copper and yolks on the back of the tubes, then basically that leaves us with the glass . . .”

Mr Clarke said the glass is sent to a recycling company in South Australia where it is crushed either as mixed glass or separated as lead and unleaded glass and sold as a commodity overseas.

While SIMS e-recycling processes a range of e-waste, the product stewardship strategy under the National Waste Policy currently only applies to manufacturers of TVs and computers.

Jane Castle, Senior Campaigner at Total Environment Centre (TEC) said while product stewardship is a soft and broad approach, it only covers TVs and computers.

“So this framework legislation will allow other schemes to be plugged into it, [so] TVs and computers will be the first [schemes].

“But there’s no reason why after that we can’t have one for mobile phones and batteries, containers and deposits,” she said.

Mobile Muster is a scheme run by the Australian mobile industry and the chief means for recycling mobiles. The scheme provides drop off points at retail shops of participating members of the program and funds curbside collections.

According to a submission report to the government by the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA), Mobile Muster collected an estimated 755 196 handsets and batteries between 2007-2008.

The report claims that plastics, ferrous metals and cardboard packing are recycled locally while circuit boards and batteries “are separated and shipped to Korea where they are further processed.”

“It is estimated that over 90% of the materials collected by Mobile Muster are recovered by its recyclers in Australia and overseas with less than then 7% ending up in landfill,” the submission report reads.

The report claims 122 tonnes of mobile phone components was collected in 2008-2009.

But Ms Castle said the mobile industry’s recycling rates remain “appalling”.

“Other products (and particular products namely mobile phones) have been sheltering under the cover of what they call a ‘voluntary scheme’.

“However it has appalling recycling rates and the industry is very good at spin so they do a very good job of making their scheme look very fancy and slick but the reality is that it’s a very poorly performing scheme, considering that it’s funded by levy on phones,” she said.

Ms Castle said a lack of initiative in returning mobile phones for recycling could be a reason for the poor recycling rates.

“[There’s] no incentive for the consumers, no incentive for the industry to improve their scheme because there’s no penalties for not reaching their targets.

“So their [Mobile Muster's] recovery rate has languished 5 or 10 percent. For about seven years. And the sale of mobile phones has continued to increase.

“So we would like to get the mobile phones [included] in this legislation,” she said.

A spokesperson from Sustainability Victoria – a Victorian government agency that helps fund recycling programs – said while most computer and TV manufacturers are willing or already recycle e-waste, in some cases, the cost of recycling is not “financially viable”.

“Certainly, there’s 5-6 companies that can do it.”

“But they will only do it if the company gets paid to pull it all apart because . . . it’s not financially viable to pull [apart] that stuff for free and then recycle it,” the spokesperson said.

On a local government level, e-waste recycling is still largely voluntary.

The City of Sydney runs a quarterly collection of electronics; a collection in March earlier this year saw a collection of e-waste “enough to fill 57.3 metres cubed,” a council statement reads.

Phil Tolhurst, General Manager of Liverpool Council in the western suburbs of Sydney said, the council is still in the development stage of a local recycling program for e-waste.

“At present, it does not have a dedicated collection service for the recovery and recycling of e-waste.

“Council is investigating the best methods for the collection and disposal of e-waste.

“Recovery and disposal methods need to be reviewed in regards to a number of factors including suitability and availability of a collection site if necessary, sufficient council resources and sourcing an ethically-orientated local e-waste recycler.”

Mr Tolhurst adds that the recycling of e-waste is an expensive and labour-intensive process.

But Mr Clarke from SIMS e-recycling notes that the industry is showing more interest in what happens to material that is sent to their plant for recycling.

“They’re now starting to ask the proper questions of their suppliers such as ‘what do we do with it’, ‘where does it go to’, ‘what do they do with it’ . . . and asking for documented evidence of that.”

“People have to ask the right up-front questions because there is no governing body to certify a recycler is being legitimate or not.

“People don’t understand enough what happens to e-waste as opposed to what is on offer.”

A national collection and recycling scheme is expected for 2011.