Friday, May 15, 2009
The Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) congratulates the Australian Government and the Environment Protection and Heritage Council in leading the development of a new national waste policy for Australia.
Waste associated with electronic industries is a growing global issue and the mobile phone industry in Australia and overseas is serious about its responsibilities in avoiding and minimising the impact of its operations on the environment, in particular avoiding and reducing waste and increasing recycling.
The industry does this in a number of ways:
To avoid waste, including hazardous waste handset manufacturers have progressively reduced the amount of materials being used to manufacture handsets and the toxicity of the materials used. Manufacturers and carriers aim to minimise the use of hazardous substances in their products, in line with the EU Directive for the Restriction of Hazardous Substances.
Manufacturers are now also incorporating recycled plastics and metals in the manufacture of new handsets. Substantial work has also been done by members in reducing the amount of packaging used, increasing the amount of recycled content in packaging and the recyclablity of packaging materials.
On the operational side mobile network service providers are continually reducing their environmental footprints through a raft of initiatives to reduce waste generation and increase recycling as well as water and energy use.
The majority of handset manufacturers (85%) and all network service providers have also been funding and managing a nationwide free mobile phone recycling service for the past 10 years. Rebranded in 2005 as MobileMuster, the official recycling program of the mobile phone industry has made significant progress over the past three years in lifting annual collections by 130%, decreasing disposal to landfill from 9% to 2% and increasing awareness of mobile phone recycling from 46% in 2005 to over 80% in 2009 (2007-08 Annual Report).
AMTA and its members have committed to increasing the current collection rate of net imports from 6% to 20% by 2013. For specific details on targets please see the Industry’s Statement of Commitment to Mobile Phone Recycling submitted to the Environment Hertiage and Protection Council in November 2008.
Two of the key challenges to achieving the proposed targets is shifting consumer behaviour away from storing old mobiles to recycling them and ensuring maximum industry participation in the program.
In response to the National Waste Policy Consultation paper AMTA in its submission has flagged its support for:
- the introduction of national regulations that require companies to demonstrate and report to government the procedures and processes they have in place to ensure the appropriate end of life disposal of the products they import and or sell in Australia
- the current initiative by the Victorian Environment Protection Authority to develop a Framework for Product Stewardship. There is a real need for clear consistent guidelines on determining when a product stewardship scheme is appropriate, if the scheme should be regulated or not and how it can be funded and implemented.
- the need to find operating efficiencies and optimising the collection and processing infrastructure such as better use of existing infrastructure such as kerbside recycling bins and drop off services like Moonee Valley City Council's Renew collections and the Hunter Resource Recovery Lifecycle collections
- the introduction of a industry funded national e-waste scheme. This scheme must be ubiquitous in access, widely promoted, accept all e-wastes, be free to the consumer and represent an assured path to effective recycling.
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