Whakatāne District residents who have unused analogue television sets sitting in their garages and homes now have a golden opportunity to get rid of them, at a reduced cost and with the assurance that they will not end up in a landfill.

With the switchover to digital television signal transmissions scheduled to take effect in this area on 1 December, many more old-style ‘box’ TVs will be consigned to the scrap heap – which is where CReW (Community Resources Whakatāne)– comes in.

“Analogue televisions contain material that would be hazardous to the environment, so we really don’t want them to be dumped in landfills,” says CReW spokesperson Marcus Baker. “And they don’t need to be, because they are almost 100 percent recyclable.”

Thanks to the Ministry for the Environment-supported TV TakeBack programme, CReW has funding to recycle up to 1,500 TVs at a concessionary cost of $5 for each set disposed of – a significant reduction on the normal disposal fee of $25.

“To simplify the process, we’re asking as many people as possible to bring their old, unwanted TVs to the Whakatāne District Council’s Te Tahi Street Refuse Transfer Station on Saturday, 30 November. We’ll have shipping containers available to load the sets directly into and people on hand to take the $5 recycling fee, so it will be a quick and straightforward job to get rid of those old TVs in a responsible and environmentally-friendly way,” Mr Baker adds.

The TV TakeBack service is available now, so anyone who wants to offload their unwanted sets straightaway can drop them in to the Transfer Station and pay the fee to the weighbridge operator, or deliver them directly to the nearby CReW reuse centre on Te Tahi Street (about 200 metres north of the Transfer Station and on the western side of the street).

Analogue TVs contain small amounts of toxic material, such as lead, and also re-usable material such as copper, aluminium, precious metals and glass. Much of those materials are recycled in New Zealand, while the glass funnel component of TV sets is sent overseas for recycling.

“The TV TakeBack service is available on a first-come, first-served basis,” Mr Baker concludes. “We know there are large numbers of redundant sets in the community, so we would encourage people to take advantage of this great opportunity to easily and safely dispose of their old TVs.”

Analogue televisions will still be usable after the digital switchover, provided their owners have a set-top decoder box and satellite dish or suitable aerial.