The long ascension of Green It in Australia

Green IT is the study and practice of environmentally sustainable electronic devises. Their goals are to reduce the use of hazardous materials in IT and promote the recycling of all old technologies which are calling E-Waste.

Nowadays, most of the developed countries are concern with the retreatment of the E-Waste. According to the United Nation, 50 million tonnes of electronic waste are thrown away every year. There are been send aboard in poor countries where they treat human’s health and environment. Yet some countries keep their wastes and use their own “natural” landfill. Surprisingly it’s the case of Australia who has shocking E-Waste Statistics for a developed country.

During the year 2006 in Australia, 500 000 computers were recycled within Australia but this figure have to be nuance with the 1.6 million of computers whose have been thrown away this years. In 2009 it was 249 million items whose were on their way to Australia. The Government has known for a long time that they would need to react. In 1992 they began the National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development which improved the management of hazardous waste. This policy was quite a success, however considering that each Australian House contains 22 electronics devises and the quick renewal of these devices it would take more to curb the E-Waste rising.

In 2008, the environment Minister Peter Garret developed the National Waste Policy which aimed to adhere to international obligation, reduced the generation of waste and provide proper recycling. To ensure this, the government has envisaged that from 2011, every manufacturer of electronic devises would pay a tax for the cost of the future recycling. Therefore they came with other schemes to help recycling such as the PSA which would give an easily access to recycling facilities for televisions and which would create some local jobs.  They keep watching the evolution of technologies and they prevent people from these changes as they have done when most of the analog televisions have been replaced by digital televisions.

The Australian’s government had made efforts to fight against the E-Waste but build legislation is long. Thus some private companies took the initiative to confront this problem.

1800Ewaste is one of them. They divert old electronic devises to prolong their lifespan, offer recycling service in all the main cities and collect personally our E waste.

Therefore famous organizations tend to make people aware of the consequence of E Waste. Greenpeace with its campaign and it’s “Guide to Greener Electronics” had input the factor “Green” in our decision and had forced electronics industry to face their responsibilities. If they want to sell their products they need to provide a proper production and a recycling plan.

Finally, the last entity who could impact on E Waste is each habitant of Australia. Using government’s help or private companies’ services, people could handle properly their waste. Thanks to that they protect the environment and they also protect themselves. Recycling a computer destroyed all the data contain in the hard drives, so instead of throwing a computer in a landfill and let everybody use the data inside you could avoid fraud and act green.

To conclude, E Waste is nowadays a real problematic for most of the countries in the world and particularly in Australia. But to change this situation government’s action isn’t enough. Companies have to involve themselves and people need to understand that acting against E Waste could serve their interests.

Nevertheless as many advertisements emphasize, IT consume a lot. A computer consumes over 2 times more energy than a refrigerator. Solving the problem of E Waste is a good thing but clearly we also need to improve the consumption of electronic devices.