Quarry Engineer Bryn Llewellyn from Waingaro quarry wants to see a change in consumer culture. He has taken a small step to inspire people inside and outside of the business to do their part for our planet. He asks people to consider what they are buying and to think about what the end-of-life process will be.

“It really is just a simple initiative, basically I bought a big green wheelie bin from Bunnings and stuck an e-waste label on it,” says Bryn. The bin will make its way around our quarries and concrete plants where it can be filled with electronic waste and taken to the not-for-profit organisation Urban Miners.

“Urban Miners is run by volunteers from the Rotary Club in Waipa. They take a small fee to either repurpose or recycle e-waste responsibly. Rare minerals such as gold and lithium can be extracted from batteries, computers, circuit boards and phones,” says Bryn.

Unfortunately, a lot of goods are made cheaply and consumers can be wasteful, throwing away products without considering repairing or recycling them. Bryn and Business Services Manager Jayden Ellis have come up with the concept of an electronic library to reduce consumer consumption and the need for new things.

Bryn says. “It is a small gesture, but we hope to shift products like keyboards, cables and laptops that are in good working order from one person to another. This gives us an opportunity to reuse goods and not be wasteful.” The e-waste initiative is fairly new, but it is encouraging to see that the response at Drury was positive, resulting in a full bin. With his work in the quarrying industry, Bryn believes that these small steps will help our people live out the Stevenson values of sustainability and caring for the environment.