Dell Urged to Recycle Battery Millions

Wednesday, 23 August 2006 23:42

There has been no guarantee that the recall, announced on Monday, will not just add to the thousands of tonnes of e-waste mounting up in landfills.

Jeff Angel, TEC Director, said, "For Dell to recall 4.1 million lithium-ion batteries without assuring the public that this massive amount of e-waste will not be dumped into landfill is very, very worrying. Producers of electronic products must be responsible for recycling of the e-waste that they have created. Dell, who should want to protect their reputation, needs to assure the community that it will act responsibly to recycle and conserve these precious resources.”

“This incident is just the tip of the massive e-waste iceberg. It highlights the inadequacy of current government regulations for the entire industry that fall well short of requiring producers to take responsibility for the waste that they create.  To date the computer industry has stalled any progress.”

“Thousands of tonnes of toxic e-waste are going into Australian landfills every year to pollute the environment and waste non-renewable resources.  The problem is only getting worse, with 2.4 million new computers sold here every year - there’s a lot more e-waste to come and governments must act.”