From your phone to your fridge your laptop to your power drill e-waste covers a wide range of items in your home and workplace.
E-waste is full of valuable resources we can reuse as well as some nasty materials that are bad for the environment.
Disposing of them through your kerbside bins or even storing them inappropriately can pose serious environmental and human health problems.
By taking your e-waste to designated drop-off sites not only will you reduce the use of raw materials to produce new electronic products but also protect our air and waterways.
What is e-waste?
E-waste is much more than phones computers and televisions. It can be found in every room in your home your garage and even your garden shed and includes:
- large household appliances (fridges washing machines microwaves air conditioners)
- small household appliances (irons toasters hair dryers watches coffee machines)
- IT telecommunications and TV equipment ( computers laptops printers mobile phones televisions remote controls)
- lighting (LEDs CFLs fluorescent tubes)
- electrical and electronic tools (drills saws sewing machines lawn mowers)
- toys (racing cars electric trains hand-held video game consoles radios musical instruments amplifiers)
- other e-waste (medical devices smoke detectors solar panels).
Why recycle e-waste?
It’s good for our environment. E-waste products can contain hazardous materials including heavy metals like lead mercury or cadmium and ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons and flame retardants.
Left in landfills or stored inappropriately these materials can leach into groundwater and soil or release into the air to create long term contamination issues.
E-waste also contains a whole range of non-renewable materials such as tin nickel zinc aluminium copper silver gold and plastic. These valuable materials are lost once in landfill.
At today’s rate of consumption many of these resources have limited reserves. In some cases the amount of certain precious metals held in e-waste outstrips the amount of virgin material available.
Where do I recycle my e-waste?
E-waste can be dropped off for free at:
Mobile phones can be dropped off at one of the MobileMuster sites across Geelong.
Drop off your AA AAA C D and 9 volt batteries (domestic quantities only) at:
- Geelong Resource Recovery Centre
- Geelong Customer Service offices
- Lara Library
- Your local ALDI store
Or you can visit our recycling guide for more e-waste recycling options.
Did you know?
- 99% of your mobile phone can be recycled and re-used.
- Australians are some of the highest users of technology and among the largest generators of e-waste in the world.
- The amount of e-waste is growing three times faster than general waste in Australia.
The Drysdale Resource Recovery Centre is a waste and recycling drop-off service that accepts and recycles a range of items not collected in household bin recycling, such as e-waste and paint.