Kiwis recycle 976 tonnes of e-waste at eDay

Despite rain across much of the country, over 976 tonnes of old computer equipment and mobile phones were diverted from landfills across the country today in the third national eDay.

The free drive-through recycling event saw 16,000 carloads of electronic waste (e-waste) dropped off at 38 centres from Kaitaia to Invercargill today with at least another ten areas organising local community e-waste collections in the weeks leading up to eDay. This is an increase on the 946 tonnes collected at last year's event.

The annual event, organised by Computer Access New Zealand (CANZ), has seen strong growth since it began in 2007 with 12 centres and this year saw more than 83,000 computer items including monitors, CPUs and printers collected for recycling.

"There is a clear need for e-waste disposal services as again we see strong support for eDay this year. The total amount of e-waste collected today is enough to fill 55 shipping containers," said Laurence Zwimpfer, National eDay Coordinator.

Environment Minister Hon Nick Smith showed his support for eDay by helping in his hometown of Nelson. Olympians Peter Fox, Barbara Kendall and Tom Ashley also joined the North Shore collection today.

Mr Zwimpfer said e-waste contains many valuable and scarce materials that can be recovered and reused for new products instead of being dumped in landfills.

"As a nation we face a number of environmental challenges and e-waste is one of them. Our surveys have found that Kiwis are aware that dumping e-waste in landfills is not sustainable and eDay provides New Zealand households with an easy and free recycling option," Mr Zwimpfer said.

Equipment collected on eDay is being transported to Auckland and Dunedin where it will be sorted before being sent to accredited recycling companies in South Korea for recycling. "Our partners use accepted international processes to ensure the safety of workers and maximise recovery of materials. They are able to recover over 95% of the materials in a computer for reuse including precious materials such as copper, lead, zinc, gold and silver," Mr Zwimpfer said.

eDay 2009 is supported nationally by The Ministry for the Environment, the 2020 Communications Trust and the Ministry of Education which funds Computer Access NZ. National transport operator KiwiRail and international e-waste recyclers CRTNZ are national partners again in 2009. Corporate sponsors include Meridian Energy, More FM, Dell, Canon, Printlink, The Laptop Company, Invo, Trade Me and NZICT.

Over 1,500 volunteers assisted in today's effort across the country removing e-waste from cars, directing traffic and interviewing drivers about their awareness of e-waste issues.

"eDay relies on the generosity of volunteers who donate their time to help across the country. We'd like to thank them again for their hard work and effort and also our many partners and supporters for making today's event a success."

"We look forward to a long term sustainable solution through the implementation of the Government's Waste Minimisation Act. However until comprehensive e-waste recycling schemes are fully operational and everyone knows how to dispose of unwanted computer equipment we expect eDay will need to be held for a few more years. We have already had interest from some communities who were unable to participate this year and are keen to sign up for 2010," Mr Zwimpfer concluded.

With the support of Trade Me, collectable computers identified today are being auctioned on a special Trade Me Charity Auction site with all proceeds contributing to the costs of eDay. For more details, visit www.eday.org.nz and select the link from the homepage.

Households and businesses are advised to visit www.eday.org.nz for more information about e-waste and detail on how to dispose of e-waste after eDay.

eDay 2009 Results by area