They stood sentinel over our living rooms for decades, but now it's finally closedown time for the old box telly.
The final phase of a Government recycling scheme, which has so far collected more than 130,000 unwanted television sets across the country, began this week across the upper North Island.
Launching the last roll-out of the TV Takeback scheme, Environment Minister Amy Adams said the low cost of televisions and the switch from analogue to digital television had created a surge in unwanted sets.
The scheme diverted the mass of bulky tube sets away from landfill and included a subsidy that lowered the cost of recycling a television to $5.
Royal Wolf, which specialise in the hire and sales of shipping containers, have so far supplied 400 containers to Albany-based RCN E-Waste, a partner in the scheme. With anywhere between 200 and 300 televisions fitting into one container, the company's New Zealand sales manager Gavin Mortlock said that by the end of the scheme, it was likely around 700 containers would have been used.
There were 18 processing sites across Auckland, as well as 27 in Northland, 23 in Waikato and 10 in Bay of Plenty. The sets are broken down manually at each of the collection sites before the parts are shipped to recycling plants.
The upper North Island switches to digital television in December.
