71 tonnes of Waikato e-waste from Hamilton eDay
Hamilton’s annual eDay on Saturday, September 12 cleared 71 tonnes of unwanted computers and electronic waste from Waikato households, schools and community groups.
Project Manager Janet Leggett’s Hamilton eDay 2009 Report includes information and photos Report09
860 cars dropped their dead computers, mobile phones, printers and digital cameras to the Hamilton eDay drop off venue at Habitat for Humanity in Te Rapa on Saturday.
9 containers – 100% full – went into the national eDay collection for shipping to South Korea for recycling of 95% of the components.
Hamilton’s provisional 71 total tonnage was second highest in the country, after Wellington (87) and before Christchurch (69) and Tauranga (56). The national tally reached 966 tonnes at the close of eDay, 3pm on Saturday. A grand total of 16,391 people dropped e-waste to one of the 40 venues around the country.
50 volunteers manned the Hamilton venue to unload, sort and pack the e-waste and survey drivers to record what they were dropping and find out what they would have done with it if eDay had not been available.
The e-waste from 6 district council free community collections was consolidated with the Hamilton drop-off. About 20 schools around the region took the opportunity to clear out their e-waste (in some cases taking 60 or more old computers or monitors out of storage).
Waikato 2020 Communications Trust wishes to thank the event partners and supporters listed below. A special thanks to Hamilton City Council for providing essential logistics and planning support, traffic management expertise and volunteers via its time off in lieu for staff who volunteered for eDay.
The District Council free eDay drop-offs extended the availability of eDay from Coromandel peninsular to Waitomo.
Hamilton eDay Project Manager, Janet Leggett, said Hamilton’s green businesses have supported the event by sponsoring a drop-off-bay, providing much needed cash and equipment to help meet local eDay event costs.
Hamilton eDay drop off venue sponsor, promotional support
Event partner; providing vital cash and in-kind sponsorship to fund and resource the event, Sustainable Environment team staff time for planning and coordination of volunteers – including HCC staff time on eDay - coordination of District Council free collections, traffic management, logistics and planning support.
Event partner; providing staff time for planning and logistics
Drop off bay sponsors:
Donated or discounted goods and services; our special thanks to Hamilton Traffic Management, Snell Packaging and Safety, Tyco and Recycled Pallets
Grants and donations were made to Hamilton eDay by Environment Waikato and the Thames Coromandel, Hauraki, Waikato, Waipa, Otorohanga and Waitomo District Councils.
Hamilton eDay was one of 38 held around the country. eDay is a Computer Access New Zealand (CANZ) initiative aimed at diverting over 1,000 tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) from landfills.
e-waste is the fastest growing waste problem globally and New Zealand is no exception; over 87,000 computer related items were diverted from landfills at last year’s eDay, including 90 tonnes collected from around the Waikato region and dropped to the Hamilton eDay site.
Now in its third year, the annual eDay event is the only nationwide community e-waste recycling event for disposing of computer items and mobile phones in an environmentally sustainable way, at no cost to the public.
”The passing into legislation of the Waste Minimisation Act in September 2008 was an important step forward in developing a long-term sustainable solution but it could take another three years before e-waste schemes are fully operational. We are pleased to announce another eDay to ensure that hazardous and scarce materials are not buried in our landfills in the interim,” said Laurence Zwimpfer, Chairperson of CANZ and organiser of the eDay event.
Securing funding for eDay is the biggest challenge for CANZ, and Waikato 2020 Communications Trust, both not-for-profit trusts, in the current economic climate. The programme relies on support from a wide range of partners including computer manufacturers and distributors, businesses, community trusts, local authorities and central Government. Mr Zwimpfer says we all have a responsibility to help protect our environment and welcomes further support.
”There are real costs involved in collecting and safely recycling e-waste and we rely 100% on sponsorship and volunteers, hence we’d welcome support from anyone willing to help us ensure that our old computers are properly recycled. This means that scarce and valuable materials can be reused rather than buried in our landfills,” he says.
National transport operator KiwiRail and international e-waste recycler, CRTNZ, are again confirmed as national partners for 2009. “We are delighted that both these partners who helped us in 2008 are willing to provide support again. KiwiRail is providing a sustainable transport option for freighting e-waste to central points and, after evaluating a number of proposals, CRTNZ was selected to provide logistics and recycling support,” said Mr Zwimpfer.
Corporate support is being led by Meridian Energy. Other confirmed corporate supporters include More FM, Dell, Canon, Printlink, The Laptop Company, Trade Me, InternetNZ, Chorus and NZICT.
A key component of the eDay programme is School eDay which will again be taking place this year. School eDay is being supported at the national level by Equico and the Ministry of Education. School eDay enables schools to safely dispose of unused computer equipment while teaching students about the benefits of recycling and the risks of disposing of e-waste in landfills. In 2008, 20% of the total e-waste collected (nearly 200 tonnes) came from schools and a similar amount is expected this year
As well as e-waste disposal information, all schools will be provided with educational posters and a downloadable schools’ kit that contains fun activities for students to learn about sustainable e-waste disposal and IT energy conservation. With the support of the Microsoft NZ Partners in Learning Programme and NTICED, an Australian educational software developer, the kit will include a new activity utilising the animation software MARVIN and eDay’s e-Waste Eddie character.
eDay and School eDay give people the chance to dispose of their old computer equipment and mobile phones quickly in an environmentally-friendly way, and are aimed at raising awareness about the importance of recovering and reusing valuable metals (copper, aluminium) and other materials (plastics, glass) as well as the environmental and health dangers of dumping e-waste in landfills.
CANZ and eDay are initiatives of the 2020 Communications Trust. The 2020 Communications Trust has been supporting the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in communities throughout New Zealand for more than 12 years and Waikato 2020 Communications Trust has done so in this region for the past 8 years.