Recycling consumer electrical and electronic equipment

Abstract

This project is aimed at analyzing the amount of electrical and electronic products that were previously and are currently in circulation in Australia and how this is recycled and disposed of when they reach their end of useful live. It was not possible to find the exact figures of these volumes since the data found from the Australian Bureau of Statistics contained only some of the consumer electrical and electronic equipment imported into the country in 2004 and that data was used to make possible assumptions regarding the numbers in circulation and being disposed of this equipment in Australia. It was also observed that there were no active proper recycling activities in place specifically for the electrical and electronic equipment in Australia. And this has eventually led to a lot of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) being disposed of into the landfills. The negative and positive impacts of these disposals on the environment were also analyzed. The small recycling activities and disposals of WEEE have also been found to have been performed without measures ensuring that these are done in a manner not endangering the public health and the environment.