eWaste and it's environmental impact is under the spotlight and statistics are expected to increase significantly over the next 10 years. Australia and the surrounding region needs to act quickly to tackle the growing problem.
Griffith University hosted the first Asia Pacific StEP (Solving the eWaste problem) conference in Brisbane on Wednesday July 21 bringing together more than 100 people of various industry bodies.
The major themes of the conference were legislation, redesign, reuse and recycling. The conference had a key purpose - to collaborate ideas on the development of a strategy for the environmental management of electronic waste in th Asia Pacific region.
The Environmental Officer for Canon Australia who attended the StEP Conference said that the day provided some very useful information that will guide the development of a regional strategy.
"Keynote speakers from various countries across the globe including Greece, Japan and Taiwan spoke of their current eWaste management systems and made recommedations that will be considered in solving the issue locally".
The Asia Pacific region is certainly lagging behind the rest of the world in handling of eWaste with more than 90 per cent of electronics ending up in landfills.
Product Stewardship was the primary focus at the Environmetal Protection and Heritage Council's (EPHC) meeting in Darwin last week. As part of the National Waste Policy Implementation Plan, a national Product Stewardship scheme is scheduled to be implemented by mid 2011 in an effort to manage and deal with the eWaste issue. Product Stewardship forces manufacturers to take responsibility for electronic equipment when it comes to the end of useful life.
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