Saturday 29th September 2007

Wellington's second eDay was even more amazing than the first.

In 2006, 1250 cars went through the Westpac Stadium car park when Wellington ran the pilot project. Today 2433 went through between 9 and 3.

"We thought last year might have cleared a back log but it appears there's still a huge amount of e-waste in people's homes, sheds and garages. People are keen to declutter but rightly avoid putting e-waste in the landfill" says Cr Celia Wade-Brown, who helped throughout the day.

97% of the material is diverted from landfills.

"The volume collected shows Wellingtonians are both computer literate and environmentally conscious. I'm sure they'll continue to support Zero Waste as an aspiration. We must look at separate collection facilities at the Southern Landfill." says Ms Wade-Brown, who leads the Environment Portfolio at Wellington City Council and has been involved in many IT projects.

Shifts of volunteers worked hard to move more than 100 tonnes of old computer equipment and mobile phones today - New Zealand's first national eDay.

National organiser, Laurence Zwimpfer, said the response around the country today was phenomenal, with more than 5,200 carloads of electronic waste (e-waste) dropped off at 10 venues over six hours. Thanks to the event, more than 20,000 computer items including monitors, CPUs and printers were diverted from being dumped in New Zealand's landfills.

"This doesn't include all the little items such as keyboards, circuit boards and mice that will also be recycled," Mr Zwimpfer said.

eDay gives people the chance to dispose of their old computer equipment and mobile phones quickly in an environmentally-friendly way, and is aimed at raising awareness about the dangers of e-waste dumped in landfills.

eDay 2007 is supported nationally by Computer Access New Zealand (CANZ), The Ministry for the Environment, Ministry of Education, 2020 Communications Trust, Divers, RemarkIT, TES-AMM, Dell and Trade Me.

The Wellington event was further supported by Wellington City Council, Westpac Stadium, Wholly Bagels and PartsPlus

Cr Celia Wade-Brown is on the Wellington eDay committee and has Waste Reduction as part of her Environment Portfolio at Wellington City Council.

For tomorrow's hourly updates on the number of cars participating in eDay, number of items collected, and estimated tonnage collected visit www.eday.org.nz

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