It is not unusual to find old CRT (cathode-ray tube) TVs on the curbsides of most suburbs, and it is estimated that more than 95% of these will be crushed along with other waste and end up in landfill.

In fact, ‘dead’ CRTs are set to be responsible for 60,000 tonnes of extra landfill each year. This means that many toxic and harmful substances, such as lead, will find their way into the environment. It also means that useful component materials, particularly metals and glass, go to waste when they could be re-used by industry.

E-waste, or electronic waste – TVs, computers, monitors, mobile phones, printers and other electronic items – has for some time been identified as a ‘waste of concern’, because of potential toxic content and its current and future impacts on the waste stream.

The Federal Government has recently announced plans to investigate regulatory framework and cost implications of developing a national recycling scheme for televisions and other e-waste. The scheme will, in part, counteract the inevitable deluge of electronic waste anticipated following during the digital changeover.

Now, in anticipation of a future scheme to recycle end-of-life TVs, a number of global TV brands have proactively formed Product Stewardship Australia (PSA) – an organisation that has proposed an industry-driven, national e-waste recycling scheme.

PSA’s membership is made up of several television manufacturers and importers including Samsung, LG, Panasonic, Sony, Sharp, Sanyo and Toshiba, among others, representing about 70% of the televisions currently being sold in the Australian market. The focus is on TVs, not computers, though the organisation could be expanded in the future to incorporate computers, especially monitors, and all forms of AV devices including DVD players, set top boxes and audio systems.

“It’s a significant part of the industry that has got together and formed current membership of PSA,” says chairman Laurie Nolan.

“We want to establish a responsibility organisation to conduct an industry-run recycling scheme. We would much rather be masters of our own destiny than have something brought upon our industry which may not concur with our way of thinking. We believe we can conduct the recycling program in an efficient manner and in tune with our needs and our modus operandi.

“Importantly, we don’t want to be caught up in a legislative and regulatory nightmare, particularly if it was assigned to be a State-based responsibility – there would be seven jurisdictions to contend with if it was left up to the States and Territories.”

A fundamental principle of the scheme, as far as PSA is concerned, is that it be a catch-all program – to prevent non-signatories being given a free ride, commercially speaking. “It is not acceptable to industry if some members of the industry can absolve themselves of all responsibility and do nothing,” says Laurie. “Any scheme must be based on a principle of ‘one in, all in’.”

“The main thing we’re asking the government to do is to provide a regulatory framework that ensures a level playing field for all members of the industry. Regulations to ensure that, if the likes of the large brands involved are prepared to do something about it, the cheaper brands are unable to get away with not doing it.

“There are 400 importers of televisions in Australia, and about 150 brands of TV on the market. Now I’ve only identified about seven or eight of those brands representing about 70% of the market, so we’re certainly the major share – but we’re not everyone. Why should we pay a financial contribution for the recycling of TVs when other people derive a competitive advantage by not contributing?”

PSA has conducted cost benefit analysis and research to establish the best way of pursuing an industry scheme. The Environmental Protection and Heritage Council (EPHC) will be responsible for regulating any potential scheme and has been working with PSA.

EPHC executive officer Bruce Kennedy sees a well-regulated, industry-driven e-waste scheme as beneficial on many levels. “In terms of environmental outcomes, we’re losing our resources, so there’s an issue of resource recovery there, as well as the potential for toxic materials to escape from landfill in the very much longer term,” he says.

“There is also some influence on available landfill space – at the moment these materials take a substantial proportion of landfill and that proportion is likely to increase quite considerably with the changeover from analogue to digital.

“In addition to all that we have community expectations. Choice modelling, a methodology used to put a value on non-market impacts, has indicated that there is willingness in the community to pay for recycling.”

PSA is trying to convince the government, through the EPHC process, of the need for a federally regulated scheme whereby the industry-founded Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO), under the auspices of PSA, would collect financial environmental contributions from all importers of TVs.

This contribution would be used to conduct a four-pronged attack to improve the sustainability of TVs, deploying education, collection, aggregation and recycling. The first step would be to organise comprehensive community education programs so that the community knows what they can and should do with end-of-life TVs.

“The second step is organising a collection program such that we would be negotiating with local council, with retailers, private waste contractors, with green groups, with private organisations to establish collection centres, either permanently or on a temporary basis, and we would then ask the consumers to bring their TVs to those collection centres,” says Laurie.

The third aspect of the operation would then be aggregation of all those collected TVs to recycling centres. “There’s quite a number of organisations with recycling plants geared up to recycle TVs,” says Laurie. “We anticipate we would be working closely with them.”

The fourth leg of the operation would be the recycling of the collected TVs.

“In terms of targets, we would start off small, because you need to build these things up, but our draft agreement with the government specifies that after five years we would be collecting 75% of all discarded end-of-life TVs, and from those, 85% of material by weight would be recycled.”

The TV components that can be recycled include glass screens, the steel from the chassis, plastic from the casings, circuit boards, electronic components and solder among other materials – there’s also many types of metal, including copper.

“All in all there’s probably about 15 different classes of material in a TV that can be recycled. These materials would have to be channelled into re-use by industry – it defeats the purpose if they’re not re-used.”