Ewaste Watch first launched in 2017, founded by John Gertsakis and Rose Read to act as a not-for-profit, research-driven advocacy organisation accelerating electronics sustainability, proactive stewardship and robust circular solutions across the product life-cycle in Australia. Since 2025 the Ewaste Watch website has operated as a project of the Total Environment Centre (TEC), an Australian based independent non-profit that has been fearlessly advocating for the environment since 1972.

TEC has been pushing state and federal governments for greater reform over e-waste for more than 20 years. In 2006, TEC released it’s first report outlining a scheme for the collection and recycling of computers and televisions, including the establishment of a Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO) overseeing a range of waste and pollution reduction strategies, and ensuring the cost for the collection and recycling of these products was included in the purchase price to be directed transparently to achieve these goals. Since then TEC has continually hounded government for more efficient, more ambitious and more transparent stewardship schemes to reduce harmful impacts on human and environmental health.

Throughout this period, while progress has been made, bad faith actors have continued to drag their feet. The unfortunate preference of governments towards voluntary industry led schemes has left thousands of tonnes of valuable and potentially toxic materials unaccounted for. This website aims to elevate calls for effective action to ensure those that create and profit from these environmentally damaging products, pay their fair share towards rectifying the environmental impacts they create, as we progress towards a truly circular economy.
 
Ewaste Watch will help enhance social and consumer awareness by promoting better product design, cleaner production, smarter logistics, increased reuse and repair, materials recycling, and innovative consumption models (including the sharing economy and collaborative consumption) and supporting markets for the use of materials recovered from recycling.

We intend to facilitate knowledge sharing, policy review, regulatory analysis, consumer education, targeted advocacy, constructive debate, exhibitions and public activations. We’ll help to bring findings from academic research to a wider audience, and provide a platform to keep those interested informed of policy and practical interventions developing in this area, drawing attention not just to the problem, but also to real solutions.