E-Waste Disposal Melbourne: Old TVs, Computers & Electronics

Here's something a lot of Melburnians don't know: it's illegal to put e-waste in your household bin in Victoria. Not the rubbish bin, not the recycling bin. That's been the law since 1 July 2019, when the state banned all e-waste from landfill.

The tricky part is that "e-waste" covers far more than most people assume. If it has a plug, a battery or a power cord, it's e-waste - which means your old toaster, your kids' broken scooter and your dead fridge all count.

Here's what that means in practice, where you can take it, and what it costs if you'd rather someone else deal with it.

What counts as e-waste?

The official definition is any end-of-life item with a plug, battery or power cord. In a normal household that's:

Screens and computing

• TVs (including old CRT sets), monitors, laptops, desktops, tablets
• Printers, scanners, keyboards, mice, cables

Kitchen and household

• Microwaves, kettles, toasters, blenders
• Vacuum cleaners, heaters, fans, air conditioners

Whitegoods

• Fridges, freezers, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers

Batteries and small items

• Power tools, phone chargers, fluorescent tubes and globes
• Anything with a rechargeable battery, including e-scooters and e-bikes

One exception: domestic smoke alarms aren't covered by the e-waste ban - check your council's advice for those.

Why the ban exists

Two reasons, and both are practical rather than preachy.

Fire risk. Lithium-ion batteries are the big one. Crushed in a garbage truck or buried in landfill, they catch fire - and battery fires in waste facilities have become a serious problem across Australia. This is why the EPA advises treating all e-waste as though it contains a battery.

Valuable material. E-waste contains copper, silver, aluminium and rare metals that are genuinely worth recovering. Victoria pulled tens of thousands of tonnes of usable material out of its e-waste stream in a single recent year. Burying it wastes resources we then dig up somewhere else.

There's also a hazard angle: old CRT televisions can contain up to 3kg of lead each.

Your options for getting rid of e-waste

1. Council e-waste drop-off (usually free)

Every Victorian council provides e-waste drop-off points, generally at transfer stations or resource recovery centres. This is normally free for household quantities and is the cheapest option if you can transport it yourself.

Best for: small items, one or two things, and anyone with a car and a spare Saturday. Watch for: opening hours, proof-of-residence requirements at some sites, and limits on how much you can drop at once.

2. Retailer take-back

Some retailers will take your old appliance when they deliver the new one, and several run drop-off programs for phones, batteries and small electronics. Worth asking when you buy the replacement - it costs nothing and saves a trip.

Best for: like-for-like replacements, especially whitegoods.

3. Council hard waste collection

Many councils accept some e-waste in scheduled hard waste collections, but the rules vary a lot - some take TVs and whitegoods, others don't take e-waste at all. Check before you put anything on the nature strip, because rejected items sit there until you deal with them.

Best for: planners who can wait for the scheduled collection.

4. Junk removal (we collect it)

We come to you, carry it out, and take it to the right recycler. You don't lift anything, you don't need a car, and you don't need to wait for a collection date.

Best for: bulky items, upper-floor apartments, multiple items at once, or when you need it gone now.

What it costs to have e-waste collected

E-waste carries recycling fees, which is why it's priced a little differently to general junk.

Our minimum charge is $200 for any job, which covers the truck, crew and trip. So if you've only got one old TV, a free council drop-off will be cheaper - we'd rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.

Where we make sense is when there's a pile of it: the office clear-out, the garage full of dead electronics, the house move where you've found four old monitors and a broken microwave. At that point you're getting the whole lot gone in one visit for a fixed price.

Full pricing: How much does junk removal cost in Melbourne?

What happens to your e-waste after we take it

Everything goes to licensed e-waste recyclers, where items are dismantled and separated into material streams - metals to smelters, plastics to reprocessors, circuit boards for precious-metal recovery, batteries handled separately under their own safety rules.

Nothing with a plug goes to landfill. It legally can't, and we wouldn't anyway: around 80% of everything we collect across all our jobs is kept out of landfill.

Frequently asked questions

Got a pile of e-waste to shift? Call 0435 377 111 or send a photo for a free, fixed quote - often same day.

Family-run and based in Oakleigh, servicing all Melbourne suburbs. Rated 5.0 from 105 Google reviews, fully insured, and around 80% of what we collect is kept out of landfill.