(Credit: Te Awamutu Courier)
A social enterprise located near the New Zealand town of Te Awamutu is transforming the community’s unwanted e-waste into something valuable.
The town is hosting an e-waste collection day on 3 March 2018 so residents can deposit their unwanted gadgets, which will then be taken to Tokoroa’s South Waikato Achievement Trust (SWAT), where the waste will be sorted and processed.
As the Te Awamutu Courier reports, SWAT “employs local people, many with disabilities, to dismantle and recover e-waste”, and the Trust has an impressive recovery rate of 95 percent, meaning very little of the discarded items go to waste.
The materials that are salvaged, which include sought-after metals such as gold and copper, “are sold to national companies and used to create different products – an electronic reincarnation.”
Printers are one of the most common items handled by staff at SWAT, according to the Enterprise Development Advisor, Gary Olney.
“When it comes to buying more ink for your printer it’s often cheaper to just buy a new printer,” he explained.
“People are becoming more cost conscious, so they’ll often just take the cheaper option, whatever that is.”-
E-waste is a growing concern in New Zealand, with the average person generating an estimated 19kg of waste per year, a figure which is predicted to leap to 26.9kg by 2030.
Waipa District Council’s Waste Minimisation Officer, Sally Fraser, explained that Te Awamutu’s waste collection day “will prevent electronics from going to the landfill” and will “encourage people to do something better with their e-waste.”
