Wellingtonians deal to e-waste

Three out of four kiwi households now have at least one computer and with half of those replaced every few years there is a growing problem of how to dispose of a mountain of environmentally unsafe waste.

But a possible solution is being trialled in Wellington where Dell NZ invited people to bring along their technology cast-offs for disposal.

There are more than six million computers in New Zealand and a quarter of a million of them are dead. Wellingtonians were invited to clear out the old hard drives and recycle their ageing PCs as Dell dealt to the modern world's flotsam and jetsam.

NZ Country Manager Derek Leitch says everybody has a part to play in the lifecycle stewardship of technology and to "make sure at the end of that lifecycle the right thing is done".

The publicity pitched it as New Zealand's first free computer recycling collection where people could clear out their office with a clear conscience rather than putting them into a landfill where they get crushed and the chemicals leach into the ground.

Tim Findlay, managing director of Remarkit, says the monitors will be sent overseas and the desktops and other peripherals will be broken down in New Zealand.

More than 1200 cars called in on Saturday, leaving 30 tonnes of technological waste to be reincarnated into items such as fence posts.

"In Melbourne they do just that - they shred plastic and they turn them into fenceposts to be used on farms," says Findlay.