Schools, firms are taking the lead to recycle used devices like phones and IT products
Tan Weizhen, Straits Times 2 May 09;
SCHOOLS and companies are leading the drive to give used gadgets such as phones and computer equipment renewed life, reducing the electronic waste that is piling up at an increasing rate.
The move to recycle e-waste is slowly picking up, thanks to students like those at the Singapore Management University (SMU), who have started collecting unwanted thumbdrives for the needy, and the National University of Singapore (NUS), who recently donated 1,000 old phones to be recycled.
Landfills are rapidly filling up, said recycling companies here such as Recycling Point Dot Com and TES-AMM, which have noticed more items being discarded as people cycle through their TV sets, computers and other appliances more quickly.
Several years ago, Recycling Point collected only fiveto 10 tonnes of e-waste a month from households and companies. Now, it collects as much as 50tonnes in just one week. 'People, especially youth, are upgrading their gadgets all the time,' said Recycling Point founder Joseph Tan.
Phone company Nokia has chosen to work with schools to 'cultivate a sense of ownership of and responsibility to' the environment among youth. It has proposed a long-term e-recycling programme with NUS and Nanyang Technological University.
Late last month, it did the same with four primary and secondary schools, as well as St Andrew's Junior College. Under the programme, students who donate phones get trees planted in their names in the reforestation programme with the World Wide Fund For Nature in Indonesia. They can view their trees on online map Google Earth.
Nokia will donate $3 for every phone donated at the schools to any of their green projects.
About 1,000 old phones were collected from NUS students at its first drive in December. The phones will be put through mills to have the raw materials recycled. One donor, Mr Loo Deliang, 26, contributed five phones. 'They have very little value left, so I might as well turn them in for recycling and do something good for the earth.'
SMUstudents have started a year-long 'Flash Your Thumb' campaign to collect 3,000 old thumbdrives for needy students here and overseas. The team is working with the North West Community Development Council, other universities and schools to set up collection points for unwanted devices.
Project chairman Loreen Zhuo said: 'People are going for thumbdrives with higher and higher memory these days. We do not want to see workable thumbdrives go to waste.'
The higher-capacity thumbdrives will go to pupils at local primary schools, while thumbdrives below 1GB will go to students overseas.
There are also more opportunities now for the public to hand over old and unwanted devices.
At the Sitex IT shows in the last two years, visitors exchanged their old computer monitors, hard drives, keyboards, laptops and printers for cash.
Cash Converters, a second-hand goods company, gave out $40,000 last year, and $28,000 the year before, for goods in working condition.
IT firms like Nokia and Fujitsu have drop points for customers to return unwanted laptops, cellphones, chargers and batteries. But Nokia said only 2per cent of all customers do so because of a lack of awareness.
Nokia's environment manager Francis Cheong said Singapore is doing its fair share for the environment. It is one of the few countries which allow other countries to bring in electronic waste for recycling. 'Many other countries do not currently allow that as irresponsible e-waste recycling and recovery can pollute the environment.'
