E-Waste Concerns

In September 2012, digital television will be rolled out across the country.  On Monday night, TV3 News looked at what the changeover will mean for the current hundreds of thousands of televisions not compatible with the impending network.  While some televisions can gain compatibility through the connection of a Free View box, many people will opt for a TV upgrade and throw out their old sets posing issues on how, and where to properly dispose of them. Watch the Video.

Jon Thornhill of RCN, stated that while there are current collection points where televisions can be disposed of correctly, there is a fee for doing so. The fee, Russell Norman from the Green party stated, is reflective of current sole responsibility on the consumer, suggesting that in order to have effective sustainable e-waste disposal, producer responsibility must be enforced.

Something that SIFT whole heartedly agrees with.

The Story of Electronics

Annie Leonard, who brought the world the wonderfully informative animated video called the Story of Stuff has just released a new one on e-waste called the Story of Electronics. Again she has researched how  e-waste is produced in the first place, the design elements that need to be changed and the problems with how e-waste is disposed of. E-waste is “designed for the dump” she says. Although the videos have an American focus they are still relevant to New Zealanders. We import tonnes of electronic goods each year that all have been designed with relatively short lives (due, mostly, to new product coming in all the time) and dispose of approximately 80,000 tonnes to landfill each year. 80,000 tonnes! Think of what happens to the toxins and heavy metals contained in the those items while they sit in a landfill.

The New Zealand government has recently announced funding from the Ministry for the Environment’s Waste Minimisation Fund into two key e-waste collection programmes. The first one was e-Day held last Saturday around the country. They received $750,000 to hold e-Day at 40 locations around New Zealand and for the first year I heard and saw advertising. And this helped. This year’s e-Day was a success with around 900 tonnes of e-waste (computers and phones) being dropped off (around 110 shipping containers). More here. There were over 17,000 cars and over 76,000 items dropped off. This e-waste will be sent to other countries for proper disposal. New Zealand does not have the facilities to process e-waste on shore. As with other waste streams it is cheaper for it to be sent off shore.

The other project that has received funding from the government is $400,000 to the RCN Group and the Community Recycling Network who are planning to set up a nationwide network of 20 e-waste drop off depots and 3 recycling facilities in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. This is so e-Day can be everyday!

The solutions that need to come in order to reduce the amount of e-waste that is polluting our environment is to 1) consume less (always #1), 2) businesses to take responsibility for the products that they produce (Product Stewardship Schemes), 3)  redesign products with less toxins and longer lives, 4) develop urban mining offshore so that the e-waste can be disposed of safely (and not negatively impacting the environments of other countries) and 5) finding solutions to old e-waste (can it be reused in new ways). There are solutions but we just need to start focussing on using them and building them.

Other relevant blog posts:

• 2010 Waste Minimisation Fund Recipients
• e-waste that isn’t going to landfill
• The Story of Stuff

You can watch the other Story of Stuff videos here:

The Story of Stuff

The Story of Cosmetics

The Story of Bottled Water

Cap and Trade

Spring has definitely sprung. Some of us are suffering from hayfever, the daffodils are definitely up and it is feeling warmer (although changeable with a cold wintry blast coming through today). Friday favourites will be taking a break for a few weeks so enjoy these links and our past Friday Favourties until October.

• Bill McKibben talks to David Letterman here (via Good USA)
• Love this video from Toronto Chuck and Vince wanting your electronic waste (also via Good USA).
• MfE has announced another project that they are funding from the Waste Minimisation Fund – this one is all about turning sewage waste into a usable product. More Here.
• Love this innovative idea for regulating the temperature inside buildings especially offices and saving energy – green curtains from Kyocera.
• We have all known this for a while and eat we still occasionally eat one – Artist Sally Davies has photographed a McDonalds hamburger for 137 days and found it doesn’t age (via Good USA)
• Need more inspiration to take small steps to create a big impact – check out these great Glee videos – the Glee cast doing there thing and promoting important environmental and social messages.  We love the battery recycling one and the library video.
• The Monterey Bay Acquarium in the U.S has developed a climate change video with the voice over from the great John Cleese.
• Localised waste management is one solution to the problem and Dunedin City Council is starting is recycling in public places this weekend at the Otago Farmers Market. There will be three stations each with an organics bin, recycling bin and non-recyclables bin (via Scoop).
• Satellite eye View – great photos of our home here (via the Guardian).

Have a great waste free weekend.

Photo Source via Derek’s Blog here.

Sand Art by Jim Denevan

Can’t believe that this is the last friday of July. The daffodils are already pushing their green tips through the hard, frosted ground. Big frost here today. The days are getting noticebly longer with more light in the mornings and evenings. Soon we will be able to spend more time outside breathing in the fresh Canterbury air (and planting the vegetables to reduce our packaging waste!).

Had a lovely drive to Rangiora yesterday to visit Enterprise North Canterbury and then took an inland road to Amberley to visit Hurunui District Council. Today we are off to Ashburton District Council and then we will have met nearly everyone who looks after solid waste for the individual districts. Kaikoura, MacKenzie and Selwyn to go. It is great to get out of the office and remind ourselves of all of the businesses, individuals and other organisations doing good green work (or who might need financial assistance from SIFT) in the region.

Here are this week’s great finds that you might find interesting:

• Live in or near Nelson – or feel like a trip to the sunniest spot in New Zealand? Visit the 2010 EcoFest Nelson.
• Illegal dumping of waste seems to be on the rise but needs to be stopped – how hard is it to dispose of the waste you produce? This guy obviously found it hard but was fined for doing it.
• This is why we need to start living more sustainable with less impact – this is our home. It is apart of this.
• No Impact Man’s great tips on creating change in your organisation. Want more – check out our blog post about this here.
• Why Doing One Thing does make a difference.
• The Empire State Building is going green here.
• Plastiki made it!
• Cool waste bin labels – we upgraded ours.
• Worldometers - there are some scary numbers here (especially the number of species extinct this year).
• Watch this great video on how e-waste is broken down into reusable parts – here.

Have a great waste free weekend.

While looking for some images of e-waste art from around the world I came across artist Chris Jordan. His work is thought provoking and makes you feel a little ill at the massive amounts of consumption. The below images are from his Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption. He has just completed a new book called Running the Numbers which looks at the collective consumer behaviours of Americans. New Zealander’s collectively don’t consume anywhere near the same levels as the US but we do consume and for some products in the hundreds of thousands (and millions for cell phones).

And where does it all go when it is no longer wanted? When it becomes waste?

Chris Jordan Circuit Boards Atlanta 2004 via Inhabitat

Chris Jordan Cell Phone Chargers Atlanta 2004 via Inhabitat

Chris Jordan Cell Phones 2007, Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones disposed of in the US every day.

Chris Jordan Cell Phones 2007 Partial Zoom

Chris Jordan Cell Phones 2007 Actual Size

We recently met up with our local Spicers paper rep who gave us all the recycled paper samples available at the moment. She also had this great little booklet called “Paper is the future – Love paper.” Paper is a resource that we consume a lot of and even though it was promoted and touted as the new way to live we have not become a paperless society (with all the new technology). People still print emails (and sometimes you need to), reports, documents, booklets, magazines etc – hundreds of thousands of reams of paper. We love the tactile nature of paper and holding it in your hands. It is also excellent at communicating, educating, motivating and story telling.

As stated in a previous post we use a lot of paper – 945,499 tonnes (221kg per person per year) in the year March 31 2009 (Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry Annual Pulp, Paper and Production)

The pink Spicers booklet talks about sustainable production and that use of paper is good because it comes from a renewable resource and is made from the offcuts of timber not the rounds.  There are standards and accreditations that paper mills can go through (and printers too) such as FSC (Forest Stewardship Council certified) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) and Environmental Choice New Zealand. And some mills even produce their own energy on site and recycle their water. The key is to choose the right paper for your product and even look into the design of your document to reduce wastage.  Use paper consciously and recycle what you don’t use. And find an environmentally conscious printer.

Here are a couple of interesting stats from the booklet:

“Per tonne of paper produced, energy consumption is down by 21%, greenhouse gas emisions by 22% and water cosnumption by 63% internationally since 1990.”

“New Zealanders recycle and reuse 78% of our waste paper and board, the highest recovery rate for used paper in the world.”

“Reading a newspaper can consume 20% less carbon than viewing news online” (Swedish Royal Institute for Technology)

We think that using digital technologies to communicate has a smaller footprint than paper but it can have a major impact. Think of all the e-waste (toxins and chemicals leaching into landfill), mining of material to make electronics, the energy used (and emissions expended) to run the technology. When you compare this with the sustainable and renewable paper industry “you can see why the print vs digital issue is far from clear-cut environmentally” says the booklet. Definitely something to think about.

]]> http://www.sift.net.nz/blog/paper-as-part-of-a-sustainable-future/feed/ 0 http://www.sift.net.nz/blog/great-use-of-styrofoam-meat-trays/ http://www.sift.net.nz/blog/great-use-of-styrofoam-meat-trays/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:15:23 +0000 Admin http://www.sift.net.nz/blog/great-use-of-styrofoam-meat-trays/

As you may remember the first competition we held was on what to do with un-recyclable styrofoam meat and vegetable trays (all 25 million that go to landfill in Christchurch). We had a stash of trays left over and our new temp Ally has used them, quite cleverly, as a desktop sorter and it looks great.

Image - copyright SIFT

Don’t forget to check out our e-waste competition which is still open. We are looking for great ideas on how to reduce e-waste. You can enter here.

Only 3.5 days to go to enter the e-waste competition so get your entry in now. We have two iPod Nanos as the prizes and you can enter online here.

We have already had some great entries but would love to get some more ideas.