Update: A New Recycling Opportunity for Sydneysiders!

Great news for all those Sydneysiders out there! On Monday the City of Sydney announced 10 new recycling stations at community centres and libraries for used batteries, light-bulbs and mobile phones.

Neighbourhood Service Centres

• CBD (One Stop Shop)
• Redfern Neighbourhood Service Centre
• Glebe Neighbourhood Service Centre
• Kings Cross Neighbourhood Service Centre

Libraries

• Surry Hills Library
• Customs House Library
• Newtown Library
• Waterloo Library
• Ultimo Library
• Haymarket Library

This gives residents a public service for recycling their hazardous e-waste that doesn’t involve waiting for the City’s quarterly e-waste and chemical drop-off days to come around.

In support the recycling of this unwanted and potentially toxic waste, Lord Mayor Clover Moore says “batteries, light bulbs and mobile phones don’t belong in our household bins” – and this is definitely something that we believe here at Recharge the Environment.

According to The City of Sydney, the statistics for recycling light bulbs and batteries is relatively grim. Every week about one million light bulbs containing mercury are sent to landfill in Australia (and as I have discussed previously, mercury is a pretty toxic substance). Of the tonnes of used handheld batteries discarded every year, the City only recovers around one tonne at e-waste and chemical clean-up days.

These new recycling stations are aimed at increasing recycling rates in Sydney.  Clover Moore has also expressed interest in a ‘take-back’ policy where “options would be available from manufacturers in the future, allowing residents to return used items for recycling”.

This is all exciting news for us – definitely a positive charge for the environment! But will these new stations work with improving recycling rates? Will a ‘take-back’ policy be more successful? What do you think?

Please leave a comment below!

– Lilly

How does North America do it?

Our last few posts have been a little bit gloom and doom, so we thought that we would take the opportunity to look abroad at some programs that are doing an absolutely great job of battery recycling.

First up is Call2Recycle.

Call2Recycle is North America’s first (est. 1996) and largest battery stewardship program, collecting and recycling rechargeable batteries and cellphones at no cost in the United States and Canada.

Product stewardship aims to minimize the environmental impacts of products in the market place, advocating that organizations look at the whole lifecycle of a product and ensure that no harm comes to the environment.

Call2Recycle has a network of more than 30,000 collection sites throughout North America, and is a leader in product stewardship (just last year Call2Recycle diverted more than 4.5 million kg of batteries from landfill!). One of the best things I think about the program is that it meets the most rigorous recycling standards in the world and no waste materials from the recycling process are exported out of the country.

This is an organization that is making great leaps in battery recycling and is definitely a source of inspiration for us here at Recharge the Environment. The program also has an amazing presence online where they are a hub for all information about battery recycling, and at the same time raise awareness about the importance of battery recycling.

Yet, how does Call2Recycle work?

Call2Recycle was developed by five concerned battery manufacturers as a voluntary, industry-run initiative to keep the heavy metals from rechargeable batteries out of the solid waste stream. That’s right it’s a non-for-profit that is industry-funded.

How fantastic does that sound?

What are some other great programs out there? Please tell us your thoughts in the comments below and we will investigate!

 

– Lilly

What Happened to the Basel Convention, Australia?

In 2010, I took a GAP year and went to Ghana  as an assisting primary school teacher.

It was undoubtedly, one of the greatest experiences in my life. Ghanaians are extraordinarily welcoming, friendly and passionate about their country. It was definitely challenging at times, yet also extremely rewarding, and beautiful.

I was absolutely horrified when my web feed started popping up with these images, with captions indicating that these were taken in Ghana.

sourced from gizmodo.com.au

According to SBS’s Dateline, tonnes of electronic waste is being dumped in Ghana from around the world, including Australia.

sourced from E&T Magazine

These photos depict Agbogbloshie, Africa’s biggest electronics wasteland.

Though I was living in Swedru, this is much too close to home for me to sit idly by – what if this affected the kids I taught? What if this affected all of those friends I made while I was over there?

As Dateline discusses, Australia has signed the Basel Convention, an agreement that restricts the exportation of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries without a permit. Australia doesn’t have a permit to export to Ghana – this is illegal. According to Dateline, the Government has launched an investigation since ‘Giovanna’s Story’ was published.

As always, more needs to be done. As Lexie discussed in her last post, exporting e-waste shouldn’t happen. Unfortunately, as of yet, Australia doesn’t have enough recycling resources on shore, to take on recycling all of our electronic waste. This makes our role of raising awareness, and promoting the correct and ethical ways of recycling batteries all the more important.

So please, reduce, reuse, and recycle your batteries.

What are your thoughts on this issue?

 

– Lilly