Ecowise Recycling provides innovative recycling services for electronics for all industries and businesses, with Australia-wide coverage including remote communities. Ecowise recycling provides innovative recycling services for electronics devices for all industries and businesses..
Our team is made up of experienced professionals who are dedicated to providing exceptional e-waste management service. The services we offer range from small businesses disposing of their old computers, to large government or corporate offices with hundreds of PC’s & servers. .
Simply put, electronic waste or e-waste refers to discarded products with a battery or plug—essentially anything electronic, electrical, or battery-powered. Common examples of e-waste include mobile phones, tablets, computers, smartwatches, fitness trackers, TVs, kitchen appliances, etc.
A recent report by the United Nations University highlights that ewaste amounts have grown from 20 million to 50 million tonnes per year since 2000. The report forecasts that the number will more than double by 2050 to reach a staggering 111 million tonnes per year.
attributing the escalating growth of e-waste to short product life cycles, limited repair options, and higher consumption rates. The report found that high-value materials such as gold, silver, copper, and platinum, conservatively valued at US$57 billion (a figure exceeding the GDP of most countries), ended up mostly in landfills or incinerated instead of being reused for future production.
Recycling not only prevents hazardous chemicals from polluting our eco-systems, but it also makes business sense. Why spend more time and money digging up precious natural resources when they can be extracted from discarded devices and reused? Clean Up Australia, a non-profit environmental conservation organisation, highlights the following facts about the growing ewaste problem in Australia:
It’s a huge problem that’s growing by the day, but we can all pitch in and do our part. All we need to do is to recycle our e-waste rather than dumping them in the bin.
The top 5 benefits of recycling e-waste include the following:
The more we recycle, the less waste we generate, which applies to all kinds of waste. Reduced landfill sites allow for more land to be utilised for more meaningful purposes such as agriculture and housing development.
As highlighted earlier, recycling e-waste enables valuable materials to be recovered and reused to manufacture new products, which saves energy, reduces our carbon footprint, and preserves Earth’s finite natural resources.
Electronic components contain a number of toxic chemical substances such as nickel, cadmium, lithium, mercury, and lead, which pose health and environmental hazards.Buried in landfills, these toxic chemicals leach into our soil, waterways, and ecosystem, contaminating agriculture, livestock, and sea life, ultimately ending up in our food and causing long-term damage to our health and the environment.
The current challenges in e-waste collection and recycling present an immense opportunity for innovative research & development and creative business models for sustainable solutions.A prime example is the world’s first e-waste microfactory by UNSW’s Professor Veena Sahajwalla. Designed as a modular system that can be installed in a space as small as 50 square metres, the microfactory crushes the e-waste, with a robot removing its useful components to be reheated in a small furnace. Its innovative and portable design makes it easy and cheap to transport to the waste site, making e-waste recycling much more cost-effective and accessible.
Making e-waste recycling a regular practice is a useful reminder of the impact our consumer decisions and behaviour have on our environment. Rather than contributing to the wasteful and irresponsible throw-away culture, it’s time for us to embrace mindful consumerism by thinking before buying and repairing/recycling before discarding.