How much Ewaste is really collected by stewardship schemes?

Product Stewardship is often touted as a means of ensuring adherence to the polluter pays principle, whereby those that are responsible for the production of hazardous waste and pollution, pay their fair share towards mitigating the environmental and human health impacts they create. This creates an incentive for those producers to actively work towards minimizing the harmful impacts their products have, in order to reduce their costs.

In Australia, ewaste and batteries are partially managed by mish-mash of voluntary and co-regulatory stewardship schemes at the federal level. These include the voluntary battery recycling scheme (B-cycle), the voluntary mobile phone recycling scheme (Mobile Muster), and the co-regulatory National Televisions and Computers Recycling Scheme (NTCRS).

In 2024, the UN Global E-waste monitor published favourable data for Australia indicating we had collectively recycled just over half of the Ewaste we generated in 2022. We were curious to investigate how much of this recycling was undertaken by formal stewardship schemes. Although we were unable to verify the source relied on by the UN for the collection rate or the estimate of total ewaste generated for 2022, we have assumed it is accurate for the purpose of this assessment.¹ We then secured data from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water annual reports on voluntary and co-regulatory stewardship schemes at the federal level.²

Only four of the five co-regulatory NTCRS bodies have reported date for the FYE 2024,³ Of those that did report, we have included >26,000 tonnes collected by ActivGroup, which is an entity relying on undisclosed partners for recycling and may potentially include volumes of waste reported through other co-regulatory bodies.

In estimating total ewaste generated across Australia, we have assumed a conservative 2% growth rate from the 2022 estimate relied upon by the UN Global Ewaste Monitor 2024,⁴ being roughly in line with population growth over that period.

As the table outlines below, less than 16% of Australia’s ewaste is collected for recycling through federally accredited or regulated schemes.

The total sum of ewaste recorded as collected for recycling through these schemes in FYE 2022, (50,995 tonnes) is well below the figure reported as documented as formally collected (292,400 tonnes), relied on by the UN Global e-waste monitor. While roughly 50% of our e-waste was collected for recycling in 2022, those industries responsible for creating those products, contributed to the collection of less than 9% of the total waste, or one fifth of the waste that was collected. Than means four fifths of current collection and recycling continues to be paid for by rater payers and other sources.

Without a clear economic incentives to reduce waste and pollution, we lack the driving force to encourage producers to change their behaviour. While Local Councils and other bodies continue to foot the bill for ewaste collection and recycling, certain producers continue to obtain a free ride from the services provided by others.

Part of the problem is undoubtedly the wide variety of items containing batteries and electronics that do not fit within any current accredited voluntary or co-regulatory scheme; These include for example:

• White goods, like washing machines, electric stoves, microwaves, dishwashers and dryers
• Temperature exchange equipment, such as refrigerators, freezers, air conditions, heaters and heat pumps
• Solar panels
• Home Battery Storage Units
• EV and e-mobility batteries
• Smoke Alarms and security devices
• Battery operated children’s toys & hobby equipment, like electric trains and racing cars
• Small household and personal devices including kitchen and bathroom appliances, video cameras, DVD players, personal devices, thermometers and vapes
• Gaming consoles, (Nintendo, PlayStation and similar items are not considered computers for the purposes of the NTCRS)
• Clothing and accessories with embedded electronics, light up shoes and skates, LED shirts and headbands,
• Radios and electronic musical equipment – keyboards, speakers, amplifiers, audio recording and mixing decks, walkmans,

The scale and urgency of this problem is so significant we cannot afford to continue the piecemeal approach of selecting products one by one for special treatment under a stewardship scheme.

We need to swiftly move towards a future where stewardship is norm across all products that are sold in Australia, rather than the exception. The broader scheme envisaged then abandoned by the federal government, for a single scheme across all small electronic and electrical products, as well as PV and Solar as outlined in the Wired for Change discussion Paper, represented a far more practical solution.⁵ If the federal government believes in the polluter pays principle and is really committed to achieving the targets in the National Waste Action Plan 2024⁶ in the fairest way possible, and doubling our circularity rate,⁷ they will move rapidly to ensure regulated and mandatory stewardship becomes the norm across all problematic waste streams, with batteries and ewaste as a priority.

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Endnotes

1. The report cites the OECD Statistics, 2022. Waste from electrical and electronic
   equipment (WEEE – e-waste) available here: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=EWASTE, however this source does not include data for 2022, nor indicate where that data was obtained from. ↩︎
2. Available here: https://www.dcceew.gov.au/environment/protection/waste/publications#research-ewaste ↩︎
3. No report was available from Sustainable Product Stewards Pty Ltd as not provided a public report for FYE 2024, their report for the FYE 2023 did not indicate any actual ewaste had been collected under their watch. The department website did not include a report from Ecocycle for the FYE 2022 or 2023. ↩︎
4. Baldé, et al.  (2024) Global E-waste Monitor report, Annex 2, had Australia’s 2022 calendar year e-waste at 583,000 tonnes ↩︎
5. Dept of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (2023) Wired for Change: Regulation for Small Electrical Products and Solar PV Systems. Report ↩︎
6. Commonwealth of Australia (2024) National Waste Action Plan 2024 www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/national-waste-policy-action-plan-2024.pdf ↩︎
7. DCEEW (2024) Australia’s Circular Economy Framework; Doubling our circularity rate.  Available online.  ↩︎