New Sims plant tackles Australian e-waste

Archiv – Australia has launched its first automated recycling plant for e-waste which will salvage up to 20,000 tonnes of IT equipment from landfill. The Sims recycling plant, opened in Sydney, will reduce monitors and circuit boards into basic components such aluminium, copper, silver and gold to be shipped to overseas Asian sites for further processing. Australia | Australia has launched its first automated recycling plant for e-waste which will salvage up to 20,000 tonnes of IT equipment from landfill. The Sims recycling plant, opened in Sydney, will reduce monitors and circuit boards into basic components such aluminium, copper, silver and gold to be shipped to overseas Asian sites for further processing.
The plant is expected to recycle 98% of materials received through the gates. Currently only about 4 percent of the 140,000 tonnes of e-waste dumped by Australians each year is recycled. Sims Group general manager Australia Peter Netchaef said 95% of materials received by the plant will come from big corporations such as IBM, Cisco, Apple and Hewlett Packard.
’We look at the equipment first to see if we can reuse the machines ‘€’ about 90 to 95 percent of what we recycle is from corporates. Consumer computers are often too old to reuse [and] you don’t have much left once you smash up an iPod,’ Netchaef said.
The plant uses eddy current systems and magnets to separate components including gold, silver and copper once primary compacting machines have reduced computers to about the size of a thumb.
Australia’€™s Environment Minister Peter Garret ‘€’ who opened the new facility- said the Villawood facility, in Sydney’€™s south west, is a practical response to reduce e-waste. ‘€˜We know that e-waste is a growing problem as Australians embrace newer technologies across a range of electronic and computing goods, and it is an issue that I am closely examining with my state and territory colleagues through the Environmental Protection and Heritage Council,’€™ Garrett explained.
He said the Australian government isn’€™t planning to tax consumers for recycling electronic goods. Instead the federal Government will look at developing policy to encourage consumers to dispose electronic waste in a proper manner. With Australians dumping 96 per cent of their technology cast-offs at the tip, the nation’s first automated e-recycling plant could put an end to dangerous environmental pollution by processing and reusing almost every piece of the electronic waste people carelessly discard.