E-waste collection services in New Zealand

The program is available in the 6 participating Warehouse Stationery stores from August 2021.

A broad range of e-waste items will be accepted at the 6 Warehouse Stationery. The items include:

• Personal and laptop computers and all cables
• Tablets, notebooks and palmtops
• Computer monitors and parts (e.g. internal hard drives and CD drives)
• Computer peripherals and accessories (e.g. mice, keyboards, web cameras, USBs and modems)
• Printers, Scanners, and multi-function devices
• Cameras and video cameras

E-waste can be described simply as any unwanted or end-of-life devices which require a plug or battery to operate (including batteries themselves).

As a starting point for Aotearoa’s product stewardship investigations for electrical and electronic products (or e-products), and following the New Zealand Government’s priority product declaration, e-products and e-waste are defined as follows:

Electrical and electronic products (or e-products) means equipment which is dependent on electric currents or electromagnetic fields in order to work properly and equipment for the generation, transfer and measurement of such currents and fields and designed for use with a voltage rating not exceeding 1,000 volts for alternating current and 1,500 volts for direct current. Unwanted and end-of-life e-products (or e-waste) means electrical or electronic equipment which is waste within the meaning of e-products, including all components, sub-assemblies and consumables which are part of the product at the time of discarding.

This free service is available to households and small businesses looking to recycle responsibly once their ICT (Information and Communications Technology) equipment is unwanted or has reached the end of its useful life. If you are a corporate business, please contact your waste and recycling service provider for professional e-waste recycling services, and/or your local council.

Customers can take the accepted e-waste items to one of the 6 Warehouse Stationery stores offering the service and hand it over to our staff at the customer service counter. Our team and our recycling partners will take care of the rest

This is a free service - funded by TechCollect NZ's members Canon, Dell, HP, Logitech, Microsoft, and Toshiba.

It is the customer’s responsibility to clear the electronic devices prior to dropping it off in store for recycling. Customers can protect their personal information by securely and permanently wiping the data on the devices. For more information about how to do this, go to: https://techcollect.com.au/delete-your-data/.

All e-waste recovered through Warehouse Stationery in partnership with TechCollect NZ is recycled by local recyclers who recover and recirculate as much material as possible. However, where local recyclers are unable to treat certain e-waste components due to recycling capability limitations e.g., printed circuit boards, or where there are limited end markets for recovered resources e.g., plastics, they are exported under permit for environmentally sound treatment or further processing offshore. Metals and non-leaded glass will be processed in New Zealand.

TechCollect NZ ensures at least 90% of the valuable resources embedded within electronic products (by weight) are recovered and re-used as secondary raw materials in the manufacture of new products, helping to drive circular economy outcomes in Aotearoa.

Whilst first stage recycling activities are able to be performed locally, New Zealand does not produce a large enough volume of certain e-waste to make it viable to recycle everything in the country. Furthermore, in some cases our local e-waste management sector lacks the capacity and/or capability to manage all e-waste products and components within Aotearoa e.g., solar panels, certain battery chemistries like Nickel cadmium etc. This is why some e-waste is sent offshore to countries that specialise in recycling specific product materials and components.

Throwing e-waste in the rubbish leads to overflowing of landfills and can cause damage to the environment. Throwing e-waste in the rubbish is also a wasted opportunity to rescue valuable resources worth recovering and can lead to combustible waste fires in landfills, especially for products and devices containing lithium-ion battery power supplies.

E-waste is increasing at a rate three times faster than municipal waste streams with the average Kiwi generating more than 21 kg of unwanted and end-of-life e-products each year.