What Happens to Australia's E-Waste

lukehopewell1 writes "Aussies recycle several million tonnes of computers, TVs, mobile phones and other e-waste every year, with the number set to skyrocket over the next decade. ZDNet Australia takes an extended look into what happens to your devices when you're done with them. Take a peek inside the e-waste recycling process and find out what happens to your tech when it goes off to the wreckers."

Re:In "real life" it goes to the Third World

[rhook]

We already have "disposal" fees on electronics here in California, the money gets put into the general fund and never gets used for "e-waste disposal", just another one of our states scams.

Not a bad living....

[gadders]

My neighbour runs a company that does WEEE (the European Electrical Recycling directive) recycling for a large area of the UK.

When the commodities boom was happening just before the Beijing Olympics, they were recycling electrical goods for free as they were making so much money on the reclaimed copper, gold etc.

Now that the metals prices have dropped, they charge the people that they are recycling for (councils, large corporates etc) so they still make money.

Re:Honest?

[elrous0]

It's not just e-waste. The same thing happens with decommissioned ships [time.com] and other dangerous waste. In the U.S., the show "60 Minutes" has done a number of pieces on this, most notably Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste [cbsnews.com] and The Ship-Breakers of Bangladesh [cbsnews.com]. Basically, when it comes to dangerous materials (with the exception of nuclear waste) poor countries inevitably become the dumping grounds for the first world. I would bet that, if you were to really track that e-waste in Australia, I mean REALLY track it (not just taking someone's word for it), you would find it eventually in a cargo container with the shippers being surprisingly reticent on the details of its actual destination.