Did you know that around 50 million tonnes of e-waste is produced globally every year, and that there is no dedicated recycling program for 90% of it? This is growing at an unprecedented rate, and 700,000 tonnes of that waste is produced in Australia. Over three quarters of that waste is dumped into landfill, and left there forever. How horrifying is that!
Welcome back to the Year 8 Biretta Environmental Blog!
This is the second weekly instalment of this blog, in which we inform the community of changes you can adopt easily into your daily life to reduce your negative impact on the environment, thanks to the ABC’s War on Waste.
Every hard-rubbish collection, our streets are filled with e-waste. This includes printers, microwaves, T.V’s and other electronics. There are over 25 million unused phones in Australia, more than our whole population! Every house will have at least one piece of e-waste ending up in landfill. To put that into perspective, from the 73 kilograms of e-waste put in hard rubbish and normal bins, about 58 kilograms of that is dumped into landfills. To help stop these problems, you can make sure that your e-waste is put into the e-waste recycling bins of your local council and reliable companies. It is time to fix this problem, as it is destroying communities and lives in many developing nations who are trying to sort through this e-waste.
Another issue at hard rubbish time is ‘fast furniture’. This is furniture from major retailers such as Ikea, which people use for a short amount of time and then throw out, causing it to end up in landfill. This is an increasing problem, as up to 85% of furniture will not be recycled.
This is vitally important to consider, as over time these problems will become bigger and bigger. Procrastination has never been a good thing for anyone, especially in these types of situations. These sorts of problems are the ones that were put off and not considered 50 years ago, and are harming us now.
Councils have e-waste bins everywhere, so if you do not know where to put your old technology, the location of your council’s e-waste recycling bin is easy to find online.
A reminder:
Season 2 of ‘The War on Waste’ is back on air this Tuesday at 8.30PM on the ABC – the issue of food waste will be explored.
FYI: We will have a mobile phone recycling facility during Science Week (August 13 -17), so start collecting those redundant devices and put them to good recycling use.
8B Waste Warriors
Ashley Curry, Sebastien Huppe, Emmanuel Louis and Keegan Parker
Proudly working with Mrs Bielinski