Guilt free e-waste disposal

Jacalyn Witheford put up with her faulty appliances for six months. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Every purchase of a fridge, television or cellphone comes with a potential problem - where do you get rid of the old one?

There's Trade Me, but what if the condition of the fridge you are replacing is so bad it has to go somewhere else?

You can't put them on the footpath with your household waste. If you are caught dumping them, council fines range from $100 to $400.

But you can get rid of those items without breaking the law.

Waitakere City offers residents free disposal of all items, including whiteware and e-waste such as computers, at its Henderson transfer station.

North Shore City and Auckland City residents must pay $15 if they want to dispose of any old whiteware through the private local transfer stations in the region.

Manukau City residents are charged $16 per item to dump whiteware at the city's transfer station but the council also holds inorganic rubbish collections every year.

North Shore waste minimisation manager Warwick Jaine said the council monitored spots where illegal dumping happened, but fines were rarely issued.

"Generally we do not fine, usually because there is insufficient evidence to support a prosecution or because we are able to have the rubbish removed by the owner under notice."

Jaine said the council preferred to find out who had dumped the rubbish and request its removal within 24 hours. But catching culprits of illegal dumping is often hard.

Earlier this week, residents of Valley Rd, Mt Eden, woke up to find an abandoned fridge and washing machine on the footpath.

A resident said the items arrived after the residents of a nearby flat were evicted.

Junk 2 Go owner Dave Lewis said his company picked up about four fridges a day from people trying to get rid of them.

"It's about convincing the public that it might cost $20, but at least you know it's going to be taken care of and not dumped somewhere."

Lewis said his company was seeing a spate of computer screens being thrown out.

"There's nothing wrong with them but people want flat screens."

A Ministry for the Environment survey found we dumped 3.2 million tonnes of rubbish in landfills a year, of which 3 per cent was electrical and electronic waste.

With landfills filling up rapidly, a whole industry is being developed to reuse and recycle electrical goods.

Consumer NZ said a concern about throwing away electronic goods was the waste of the resources, as metals could be recycled indefinitely without degrading their strength.

It takes 95 per cent less energy to recycle, rather than smelt, aluminium, and 75 per cent less energy to recycle steel.

Now a whole industry centred around recycling and re-using electronics is flourishing. Websites such as Freecycle allow people to exchange goods they no longer want. Formed in Tucson, Arizona, in 2003, the website now operates in 70 countries and has millions of members.

Old and unwanted cellphones can be dropped off at Telecom and Vodafone shops.

The phones are sent overseas, where they are either reprogrammed for reuse or recycled.

There is also a range of companies that can safely dispose of old computers.

Auckland firm The Ark specialises in refurbishing old computers.

Agitated over broken appliances

A broken washing machine and a faulty fridge have been the bane of Jacalyn Witheford's life for the past six months.

But the 26-year-old was stumped about how to get rid of them.

Dumping them was a no-go, partly because it's illegal, but also because they were both too heavy to move.

So she sold the fridge on Trade Me for $23.50 and will put the washing machine up for auction soon.

Witheford wasn't aware that she could have taken the items to a transfer station, or by calling a junk removal company and paying for it to be taken away.

"There is obviously a need for those companies because not everyone would have the patience for using Trade Me."

The washing machine was given to her by her parents but things started to go wrong during its move to her Blockhouse Bay flat.

"It just stopped working, the fan broke, then something fell out the bottom." The fridge has never worked properly in the six years she has had it.

anna.rushworth@hos.co.nz