Waipā e-waste recyclers Urban Miners reduce recycling fees

Urban Miners volunteers processing e-waste at their processing facility. Photo / Michael Jeans

Waipā e-waste recyclers Urban Miners have made substantial and wide-ranging reductions to their recycling fees for 2023.

A key objective of the not-for-profit organisation is to return any surplus to the community by way of reduced fees.

Ongoing support from the Waipā community has enabled Urban Miners to reduce their fees twice in 2022 because of the large volume of e-waste collected and because they now process most of the e-waste they receive.

The price reductions include several high-volume items such as laptops, computers, flat-panel TVs, small household appliances and microwave ovens.

Spokesman for Urban Miners, Mark Hanlon, said, “Many of our items have been reduced by 50 or 60 per cent. We have about a dozen items now that only cost $2, and another 12 to 15 that cost $5. This is all in the interest of getting more people to recycle their e-waste rather than sending it to landfill.”

In New Zealand, over 100,000 tonnes of e-waste goes to landfill each year, yet only about 2 per cent are recycled.

Urban Miners was started two years ago with the aim of recovering and recycling as many materials as possible from e-waste.

Their success is starting to have tangible benefits for the Waipā community, with 15 tonnes of e-waste successfully diverted from landfill in 2021-2022, and more than 19 tonnes diverted in 2022-2023 to date and still counting.

On top of that, retrieved metal, as well as multiple loads of batteries and wiring have been sent for full recycling.

Reusable household items are salvaged and given to the Lions Shed in Cambridge for resale. Cellphones and computers are checked, repaired and upgraded by specialist volunteers and sold at low prices at a monthly stall at the Lions Market in Cambridge.

The operation is run by Cambridge Rotary Club in conjunction with Te Awamutu Rotary and backed by a large team of local volunteers who run monthly collection days and dismantle and process the e-waste collected.

An Urban Miners e-waste collection event in Te Awamutu. Photo / Supplied

Dismantling maximises returns on any reusable materials and commodities, such as circuit boards, and reduces the volume of e-waste sent to third-party processors and the associated costs for this service.

Urban Miners will restart their monthly e-waste collections in Te Awamutu in January. The first collection for the new year is on Sunday, January 29 from 9 to 11am outside the Te Awamutu Rugby Sports and Recreation Club.

Urban Miners’ latest price list can be accessed at https://www.urbanminers.nz or on their Facebook page.