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Greenies Slam Recycling Efforts |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Tuesday, 31 July 2007 |
The Australian mobile phone industry and Government regulators have both been
slammed by an action group called the Total Environment Centre. A damning report
issued by the 35 year old environmental group says the industry recycling
efforts that see just 3 per cent of mobile phones actively recycled is
"pathetic".
In the
Mobile
Muster Myth Exposed
(pdf download)the Total Environment Centre brings together information
from two recent reports by the mobile phone industry and a survey it
conducted in the Sydney area.
The report demonstrates, the ‘Mobile Muster' scheme to recycle mobile
phones is seriously flawed having achieved "a paltry 3% recovery rate".
"After seven years in the game, all the industry can claim is a
pathetic 3% recycling rate, despite collecting a levy on every new
phone sold. Mobile Muster is all spin and no substance", said Jeff
Angel, Director of the Total Environment Centre.
"The Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) in two
reports to the NSW Government shows only a few percent of the mobiles
sold have been recycled. AMTA likes to selectively play with figures
but they can't hide their hopeless program.
"They also claim that most people don't dump their phones, preferring
to keep them. But this is a temporary situation. Once the phone is
technologically redundant, neither the original owner nor the person
they may have passed the phone onto, is going to keep it."
The recycling of mobile phones is important to the environment because
they contain dangerous chemicals such as the carcinogenic Cadmium, lead
and the potentially explosive Lithium, among other nasties.
To check on why the industry was achieving only a three per cent return
rate, The TEC surveyed in the City of Sydney to see how phone retailers
were participating in the scheme. It turned out less than 20% (25
retailers) of mobile phone retailers actually participate in the
recycling program.
And in fact only 8% of all stores (11 retailers) have a visible recycling bin.
The report also claims that the performance of even those handful of
retailers was inconsistent, and had minimal promotional and/or
educational material (29%) and lacked an easily visible position of
recycling bin (38%).
"It's time environment ministers imposed a regulated Extended Producer
Responsibility scheme with clear targets, and make industry responsible
and accountable for the waste it creates. A refundable deposit or a
pre-paid return envelope with the phones would be a great incentive to
get those phones out of cupboards and bins and recycled. There are
successful examples from overseas," said Angel.
www.tec.org.au
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