News

Not-for-profits MobileMuster and Oxfam Australia are asking Australians to recycle their old mobile phones this Christmas to help the environment and fight poverty.

For every two mobile phones recycled over Christmas and New Year, MobileMuster will purchase a chicken through Oxfam Unwrapped to help families living in poverty. The ‘Old phones, more chickens’ campaign will run until 31 January 2012*.

“Over 19 million old and broken mobile phones remain unused in drawers and cupboards and many more will be purchased for Christmas. Every Australian can afford to give the planet and a family in need a special gift this festive season,” says MobileMuster Manager, Recycling, Rose Read.

According to Ms Read, almost every household in Australia has more than two unused handsets that could harm the environment if they ended up in the rubbish.

Mobile phones aren’t biodegradable, but they are nearly 100 per cent recyclable. The recycled materials can be turned into plastic fence posts, batteries, jewellery and stainless steel.

“The holiday period is a time for giving and receiving. This one simple gesture of recycling your old mobile phone will achieve two great outcomes; helping people living in poverty and the environment,” says Ms Read. 

For example, families living in poor communities in Laos can find that life is a daily battle to obtain essentials, such as food and a source of income.

“For a family living below the poverty line in Laos, a chicken can be an invaluable resource. Chickens can provide eggs for food, and can be sold at the market to provide people with a regular source of income,” says Oxfam Australia Fundraising Manager, Leigh Stewart. 

Oxfam Unwrapped also equips women in Laos with the skills to raise and keep the chickens.

“2011 is the third year that Oxfam Australia has worked with MobileMuster. The partnership has already seen over 1,000 chickens and 1,000 ducks bought through the Unwrapped program,” continues Ms Stewart.

“This year MobileMuster hopes to collect and recycle enough mobile phones to purchase 2,000 chickens through the Oxfam Unwrapped program,” says Ms Read.

“Recycling a mobile phone through MobileMuster is free, easy and safe. This Christmas it will also help to give the environment and a family in need a brighter start to 2012,” concludes Ms Read.

Old phones, more chickens

Recycle two old mobiles by 31January 2012 and MobileMuster will give a family in need a chicken through Oxfam Unwrapped

MobileMuster will purchase up to 2,000 chickens through Oxfam Unwrapped.

To recycle your old mobiles, batteries, charges and accessories simply:

1. Drop ‘em off at your local MobileMuster collection point (visit www.mobilemuster.com.au to find your nearest one)
   
   OR
2. Post ‘em in for free by either downloading a MobileMuster/ Oxfam Unwrapped reply paid label from http://replypaid.mobilemuster.com.au/ or by picking up a free recycling satchel from your nearest Australia Post outlet and following the packing instructions

Make sure you send ‘em in by 31 January 2012

* Must be posted by 31 January 2012. Terms and conditions apply. For MobileMuster/Oxfam Australia Terms and Conditions refer to www.mobilemuster.com.au. For more info on the Oxfam Unwrapped program go to www.oxfamunwrapped.com.au.

For further information or to interview Ms Read or Ms Stewart please contact:

• Victoria Rooney, IMPACT Communications
  (02) 9519 5411, victoria@impactcommunications.com.au
• Kimberley McMillan, IMPACT Communications
  (02) 9519 5411, kimberley@impactcommunications.com.au
   
  About MobileMuster:
  MobileMuster, is a not-for-profit program funded solely by mobile phone manufacturers and network carriers to collect and recycle mobile phones. All mobiles are recycled to the highest environmental standards. None are refurbished or sold for reuse.
• About Oxfam Australia:
  Oxfam Australia is a leading international aid agency that works in 28 countries around the world to help people overcome poverty and injustice. Oxfam help people find their own sustainable solutions to poverty through giving them education, food, clean water and the chance to earn a living. Oxfam respond to emergencies, delivering essentials such as clean water, shelter and food, and help communities rebuild and be prepared for future crises. Oxfam also campaign for change, encouraging world leaders, companies and organisations to change the rules and practices that keep people in poverty.

MELBOURNE: Materials recovery company Close the Loop Ltd (CtL) is pleased to announce that its founder and Executive Director (Business Development) Steve Morriss has been named as a Southern Region finalist in the 2011 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year awards.

Morriss joined a line-up of other outstanding entrepreneurs from across Australia at the recent regional finals event in Melbourne. While not winning the regional award, he says the experience was fantastic: “The recognition, the networking, the learning, made the whole journey most enjoyable,” Morriss said. “It’s great that such a game-changing environmental initiative has now a proven market in the US, and strong recognition in Australia.”

Established from scratch in 2001, CtL has grown steadily since and now employs more than 50 full-time staff at Somerton, Melbourne, Australia and more than 120 at Hebron, Kentucky in the US. It has established a logistics network of more than 30,000 active collection points across Australia and is expanding its collection and processing facilities in the US.

“This is one of the most rewarding and important milestones so far, for me personally and the staff at CtL,” Morriss said.

Significantly, it underscores the operational mantra embodied in both the company’s name and zero-landfill promise,” he said. “We were really the only finalist that could be considered a ‘cleantech’ company.”

Before founding CtL, Morriss established a business specialising in the sale of imaging supplies, including original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and re-manufactured toner printer and inkjet cartridges. He developed Close the Loop as a unique selling proposition to combat the price pressure being applied by large, multinational office supplies companies.

Morriss’s simple – and entrepreneurial - offer was to take back and recycle everything that he supplied, at the end of its useable life. This proved highly successful, and he immediately realised that end users had a strong desire to recycle their cartridge waste. CtL was thereby created, with its “zero-landfill promise” and a mission to work in partnership with OEMs.

Headline article in Recycling International September 2011 by Martin Summons

Despite the claimed pursuit of recycling being a byword across contemporary society and industry worldwide, the consumption of imaging consumables - inkjet and toner cartridges, toner bottles, fuser and drum units, toner waste hoppers and technicians' waste - continues to outstrip the recycling of them by an enormous margin. This article explains how one firm, Australia-based Close the Loop Ltd, tackles this particular recycling challenge and how its ambitions extend well beyond its country of origin.

Whereas Europe is currently in surplus with regard to recycled toner and ink cartridges in the remanufacturing sector, the USA, China and Australia are in deficit. And that means hundreds of millions of used original equipment manufacturer (OEM) cartridges continue to find their way into landfill. Consider these figures: of the 1.6 billion OEM cartridges sold annually and consumed globally, the USA sells 550 million, Europe 350-400 million and Australia 35 million, with the rest of the world making up the balance. Only 25% of this total is remanufactured, leaving 1.2 billion OEM products available for recycling - and yet less than 30% of this sub-total of e-waste is collected and recycled outside the remanufacturing system.

Increasingly 'on-radar'
But things are changing: cartridge recycling is increasingly 'on- radar' for OEMs worldwide because of the draft global standard from the US-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) known as EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool). This imaging equipment procurement standard confirms that pressure is being - and will continue to be - placed on OEMs as to how they manage end-of-life imaging consumables that bear their all-important brand names.
In order to qualify under the US-developed standard, EPEAT demands that OEMs must provide a used product take-back programme and, additionally, not make cartridges that cannot be remanufactured or recycled. OEMs must also make their printers capable of using remanufactured cartridges. EPEAT's focus is on re-use and on placing the onus squarely on OEMs to recycle.

Closing the loop
Among those keenly watching the progress of EPEAT is Greg Turnidge, Managing Director of Australia-based Close the Loop Ltd (CtL), a materials recovery company with established operations in both Australia and North America that fairly lays claim to a zero waste-to landfill reputation. CtL ranks among the few companies that collect and recycle cartridges for resource recovery. It also has a highly-developed post-consumer recyclables data tracking storage and retrieval system that provides an auditable e-waste trail.

Click here to read the whole article …

Since the Industrial Revolution, the tide of progress has ebbed and flowed: five distinct waves, each starting with disruptive new technologies and ending with a global depression, have transformed our industries, societies and economies almost beyond recognition. We are now on the cusp of another massive transformation - the sixth wave.

In this wave a spectacular boom in technology and powerful new markets will drive a shift away from resource dependence to a new way of life: resource efficiency. Waste will be a source of opportunity and nature a source of inspiration.

THE SIXTH WAVE is a business book, a motivational book, a bold prediction and a roadmap to the future. It is for anyone interested in understanding how the next wave of innovation will change our lives, and how to succeed in a resource-limited world.

CtL excerpt (pg 131-133):

Closing the loop
E-waste has received a lot of attention in recent years. Our insatiable hunger for the latest electronic gadget or hardware upgrade is building an ever-increasing mountain of electronic waste. This mountain contains some extremely valuable resources, such as lead, copper and gold, but it is also contaminated with substances that pose a threat both to human health and to the environment, such as dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), cadmium, chromium, radioactive isotopes and mercury. One of the biggest challenges with recycling e-waste is how to get to the good stuff while avoiding the bad stuff.
Close the Loop is an Australia company that has found a way to recycle 100 per cent of a particular type of e-waste: the ink and toner cartridge used in printers, photocopiers and fax machines. These are particularly problematic to recycle because the cartridges are often very complex, made with many different types of plastic and metal, and contain leftover toner particles, which are not only extremely fine but also potentially explosive in certain conditions.
To begin with, nearly half of all the cartridges that Close the Loop receives are actually returned to their original manufacturers, who are able to replace their worn parts and reuse them. But for those that can't be returned, Close the Loop's solution is its patented Green Machine, which cracks open and shreds the cartridges, reclaims any toner via an extraction system, then separates out the metal and plastic. The metal - usually aluminium and steel - is sent to metal recyclers and, where possible, the plastics are sent back to the original equipment manufacturers for reuse in new cartridges.
What's left behind is a mix of plastics that Close the Loop's Duncan Freemantle describes as a 'contaminated plastic stream'. 'If we run a batch where we have a significant amount of mixed plastic... you do generate a contaminated plastic stream, or what's considered contaminated in the commodities market. You've got not place to go so, being a zero waste to landfill company, we had to come up with a solution,' says Freemantle, the manager of Close the Loop's technology division for the Australasia region. The solution the company came up with was eWood.
'eWood allows mixed contaminated plastic to be extruded into a useful product, like for landscaping,' Freemantle says. eWood looks and feels similar to wood products, and can be worked and shaped just as easily. It can be used in many of the same applications as wood, such as fences, outdoor furniture and garden hedging, but it's made of 100 per cent recycled cartridge plastic. It's also free of the contaminants that plague e-waste, especially brominated flame-retardant chemicals. 'We have a specialist extrusion process... that deals with brominated flame retardants - we can extract them, ensuring that the end product doesn't have it in it,' Freemantle says.
What Close the Loop has succeeded in doing is exactly that - closing the loop, so that nothing is wasted and every part of a product goes back into the system and is reused in a production fashion. The company is even working with cartridge manufacturers to help them design cartridges that are easier to separate into their component parts and reuse of recycle.
Close the Loop... has made resource efficiency a profitable venture, and they're not the only ones. Where this is profit, there are investors. Fuelling all of this technology development are huge investments in all sectors of the economy, from government to big business and venture capital.

To read more about the Sixth Wave visit www.sixthwave.org

July 2010 marks a milestone for Close the Loop of collecting and recycling over 15 million printer cartridges from Australian workplaces and home users across our various collection programs! Including all cartridge wastes collected and processed by Close the Loop we have diverted a massive 11,953 tonnes from landfill!

Thanks to all who have participated in our collection programs over the years, let's keep recycling those cartridges!

For the 6th year running, Close the Loop has been certified with 'Zero Waste to Landfill' for its operations. The certification process was conducted by independent environmental auditors.

Click here to view the Zero Waste to Landfill certificate

July 2010 has just see Close the Loop complete and pass a renewal audit for both ISO 9001 & ISO 14001 accreditation. These accreditations ensure that we following best practice guidelines for environmental management.

Date: 29-Mar-10
Source: www.cartridges.planetark.org
Author: Michelle Cook

Recycling has just become a whole lot easier for rail commuters in Queensland with the introduction of public place recycling bins at each of the state's 147 train stations (see right).

What makes these bins unique to other public place recycling collections is that they are made from eWoodTM, a timber replacement product made from the plastics in recycled printer cartridges. 

"eWoodTM is a great example of an innovative product developed to help reduce an environmental problem", says Planet Ark's Campaign's Manager Brad Gray. "Printer cartridges are made up of a combination of different plastics, toners and metals which makes them difficult to recycle. eWoodTM turns the durability of plastics into a positive. It is an incredibly durable material which can withstand the elements without rotting".

"By diverting used cartridges from landfill and giving waste plastics another life, eWood is an environmental success story", says Gray.

Source:

Earth Day is an annual day for reflection and aims to inspire awareness and appreciation for the environment.

This Earth Day, Planet Ark is celebrating eight years of its innovative e-waste recycling program, 'Cartridges 4 Planet Ark'.

With already more than 12 million printer cartridges collected, 'Cartridges 4 Planet Ark' is one of Australia's most successful e-waste recycling programs, diverting more than 5,400 tonnes of waste from landfill or enough printer cartridges to fill 24 Olympic size swimming pools.

Celebrate Earth Day with Planet Ark by recycling your used printer cartridges at one of our participating retail outlets.

To read more, visit www.cartridges.planetark.org

Are you in a workplace in Victoria with your own 'Cartridges 4 Planet Ark' collection box?

You can now recycle your old mobile phones, batteries, chargers and accessories just by dropping them in your 'Cartridges 4 Planet Ark' collection box at work.  

or more information and to download posters and flyers to help you promote the program with your colleagues, click here (link to the Mobile phone recycling page)