
However, Australians dump an estimated 140,000 tonnes of hazardous e-waste and Planet Ark founder Jon Dee said the plant would hardly be used because the Government had not introduced a national scheme that would make it easy for people to recycle their old electronics.
Even the electronics industry has also called for such a scheme, but the government does not really want to set one up. Computer manufacturers such as Dell and HP, councils and the mobile industry through its Mobile Muster program offer e-waste recycling services, but Dee said these were all ad hoc, hidden and hardly used.
Dee added that a flashy new recycling plant was useless unless you have a constant supply of computers going into it and, as it happened, most monitors and old computers are all heading for landfill.