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What Happens to Australia's E-Waste

Posted by timothy on from the as-long-as-you-keep-it-down-under dept.

lukehopewell1 writes "Aussies recycle several million tonnes of computers, TVs, mobile phones and other e-waste every year, with the number set to skyrocket over the next decade. ZDNet Australia takes an extended look into what happens to your devices when you're done with them. Take a peek inside the e-waste recycling process and find out what happens to your tech when it goes off to the wreckers."

4 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I hate that sort of terminology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's special in that computers depreciate to 0 dollars in 2 years.

    So we are often faced with the choice of upgrade or wait.

    Hence it is nice to know what the consequences of upgrades are.

  2. In "real life" it goes to the Third World by acidradio · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sure there are some legitimate e-waste recyclers in the developed world but they are far and few between. Most of this stuff is pawned off on places like Nigeria, India and China where those people are forced to contend with toxic metals, burning plastic, strong acids and harmful processes performed in unregulated back-alley operations.

    If we don't recycle it responsibly it just gets disposed of in some toxic manner in another country. I think it's about time we attach a disposal fee or tax on all these things at the time of purchase. The product cycle on most electronics is rather short. It WILL be disposed of sometime and that interval gets to be less and less. "Out of sight, out of mind" doesn't get rid of the pollution, it just sends it to some other country. That other country is still on this earth though.

    1. Re:In "real life" it goes to the Third World by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What's to stop people just dumping it on the street at night? Who's going to drive it all the way to a special place and pay for the privilege?

      Here we have a truck which comes round on Thursday mornings to collect your old stuff.

      --
      No sig today...
  3. Re:I hate that sort of terminology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You have mod-points and want to "remedy his ignorance", but you're not prepared to have your comment associated with your account. Nice. His point, which you neatly ignored, troll, is that the prefix "e", which seems to be attached to anything even remotely related to computers, is completely inappropriate when referring to this waste.

    Should all the scrapped iMacs, iPods, iPhones, Macbook Pros etc. be referred to as iWaste? No. It's as retarded as saying "e-bullying" or "e-stalking". Differentiating between computer waste and regular waste is as easy as, well, that. See, I did it without resorting to the misuse of an already ridiculous neologism.