How does Ecocycle collect, transport, store and recycle dental amalgam?
Dental amalgam does a great job in combating tooth decay, but they don’t last forever and often need replacing. If old amalgam fillings are discarded into the sewers, they end up in waterways and the ocean. There, bacteria convert metallic mercury into the highly dangerous methylmercury. That’s the form that contaminates fish, and can end […]
What Are Councils Doing To Recycle Lighting?
Recently we looked at the level of support given by local councils to battery recycling and found a mixed result. Some councils provided battery collection services through their offices and depots, others actually recommended tossing them into a normal rubbish bin. So, how about lighting recycling? Fluorescent lighting waste is top of our list of […]
Call For NT Government To Take The Lead On Lighting And E-Waste
Ecocycle and Rusca Environmental Solutions are delighted to announce that they have entered into a formal agreement that will boost hazardous waste recycling in the Northern Territory. Ecocycle is Australia’s only fully licensed recycler of mercury-containing waste, and a major recycler of lighting, battery and other types of electronic waste. Rusca Environmental Solutions is a […]
Minamata Convention On Mercury Comes Into Force
The Minamata Convention on Mercury has officially entered into force, 61 years after the first cases of what came to be known as Minamata disease were identified in the Japanese coastal city of the same name. The convention came into force on August 16, and the first conference of the parties will take place from […]
What’s a recycling certificate and what do I need it for?
A recycling certificate documents the amount and type of waste that your organisation has recycled. The certificate can be used to show that your company is compliant with government standards and recycling policies, and shows your commitment to sustainable business standards. Here are three ways in which recycling certificates can benefit your business: 1. Provide […]
3 Household Products We’d Love To See Tackled On ABC’s War On Waste
Across three chilling episodes of the ABC series War On Waste, Craig Reucassel lifted the lid on several of Australia’s dirty little secrets. Sorry, make that dirty BIG secrets, because the amount of stuff we throw away every day is nothing less than shocking. War On Waste focused on high volume wastes including food, clothing, […]
Laser Group And Ecocycle Switch On Lighting Recycling Partnership
It might not quite have been love at first sight, but when Laser Group and Ecocycle first met they were clearly a perfect match. Laser Group is a leading network of electrical and plumbing contractors spread across Australia. Ecocycle is Australia’s only fully licensed recycler of mercury and a major battery recycler. Many of Laser […]
The Effects Of Mercury On Water
Mercury never goes away. It just gets moved around, changing from one chemical form to another, with water playing a major role in both the transport and transformation of mercury. Once mercury is released into waterways it can end up just about anywhere. Ocean currents can carry it around the world, it can evaporate into […]
Mercury study finds safer way for small-scale miners to extract gold
Artisanal or small-scale gold miners frequently use mercury in their gold extraction process. The gold-mercury mix, or amalgam, is then heated, usually over an open flame, to vapourise the mercury and leave behind the purified gold. This a potentially deadly activity, with the miner breathing in mercury fumes and the rest settling on and contaminating […]
How does Ecocycle collect, transport, store and recycle e-waste?
Ecocycle started life as a specialist recycler of mercury-containing waste – mostly dental waste and fluorescent lighting waste. To ensure safe handling of these hazardous materials we created an Australia-wide logistics network for collecting waste by the cardboard box load up to truckloads. With trucks already on the road it was a simple step to […]
How the money raised by waste levies should be spent
Most states and territories in Australia charge levies on waste that goes to landfill. The aim? Less waste to landfill and more to recycling. Naturally, one would expect the money raised by these levies to be used to support recycling, but that isn’t always (or even often) the case. Take Victoria as an example – […]
What can you recycle on a building site?
With much of the construction industry embracing the philosophy of ‘green building’ there’s growing pressure on building site managers to get serious about recycling. More than 90% of construction and demolition waste can be recycled – everything from concrete rubble and steel reinforcing to timber offcuts and bits of PVC pipe – but the diversity […]
How do I recycle white goods?
White goods are large electrical items used in the home and yep, you guessed it, they are often white in colour. To be a bit more specific, white goods comprise refrigerators, washing machines, clothes dryers, ovens and stovetops, microwave ovens and air conditioners. On the one hand, they are attractive objects for recycling because they […]
How your workplace can run its own e-waste recycling scheme
These days you’d be hard pressed to find a business that doesn’t rely on computers, printers and mobile phones. And like any electronic items these either break down or become technologically obsolete, adding to Australia’s (and the world’s) growing mountain of electronic waste. E-waste contains toxic materials, such as lead and mercury, as well as […]
How Australian schools can dispose of and recycle e-waste
The dark side of the glittering screens that school teachers and students rely on is that they eventually fail or become obsolete. They then add to the mountain of electrical and electronic waste (e-waste), much of which ends up being dumped into landfill. Aside from things with screens – computers, tablets, phones, calculators, TVs – […]
How Ecocycle is working closely with Indonesia to tackle mercury recycling
With more than 260 million people, Indonesia is the world’s fourth largest by population. It’s also developing rapidly, and much of its economic activity is illuminated my mercury-containing fluorescent lighting. Indonesia is also home to significant oil and gas extraction industries that generate mercury-bearing waste, and artisanal gold mining remains a major cause of mercury […]
How Australian businesses can dispose of and recycle light bulbs
Around Australia the main method of dealing with lighting waste is to dump it in a hole in the ground, cover it over and forget about it. That’s despite the fact that the majority of lighting waste being dumped in landfills contains the toxic metal mercury. Over time, mercury can leach from landfill into waterways, […]
How to properly dispose of different light bulbs: incandescent, CFL/fluorescent, halogen, LED
How you can best dispose of lighting waste depends on two things: a) the type of lighting and b) the amount of lighting waste you or your organisation needs to dispose of. Let’s start with what to do with smaller (household or small business) quantities of lighting waste. How to dispose of incandescent light bulbs […]
Ecocycle provides certificates for lighting recycling
It’s reasonable to expect that materials sent for recycling will, in fact, be recycled. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, with some waste types being illegally exported or ending up in landfill. To assure clients that their waste is recycled, Ecocycle provides recycling certificates on request. These certificates meet a number of needs: They provide […]
LED lighting market to grow rapidly by 2023
The LED lighting market is set to rapidly expand, indicating a shift away from incandescent and fluorescent lighting. According to P&S Market Research, the global LED lighting market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.6% between 2017 and 2023. That will see this sector of the lighting market valued at […]
