A trip to the tip sparked Austin Turpin’s idea to keep e-waste from going to landfill, one truck load at a time
What were you doing when you were 14? Newport local, Austin Turpin was at the tip with his dad wondering why no one was tapping into the goldmine of discarded laptops, desktops and servers stacked in the corner.
“I picked them up and I thought, these have to be worth something,” Austin told Manly Observer.
“I had no idea about IT at the time, but my friends were building computers. At the tip, people were throwing out things that had a lot of retained value. Being 14, I thought, wow, I can sell this on eBay for $20 and that’s where it started.”
The following year, at 15 years old, Austin founded Fliptech, a recycling company for redundant electronics. Fast forward seven years, Austin has eight employees and works with some of the biggest companies in Sydney to recycle and refurbish their e-waste.
Fliptech recycles and refurbished laptops, desktops, servers and switches with almost 100 per cent of all items collected avoiding landfill.
“When a company comes to us and asks us to take their e-waste, we aren’t going to be picky about it,” Austin, now 20, explained.
“We just clear out entire rooms and truck loads of old redundant electronics that would’ve been destined for the tip.”
Once back at Fliptech’s warehouse in Warriewood, the e-waste data is sanitised (effectively, anything stored on the device is removed).
“Companies need to protect their information, so we erase everything on the machine,” Austin said.
“Australia is behind in data protection and sustainability. There are gaps in data security in Australia and that’s largely why Australia is one of the countries with so many data breaches because we don’t do things properly when it comes to data de-processing.”
Austin explained legislation is coming where companies, like the one Austin heads, will have to abide by strict rules and guidelines.
Once the device is cleaned, Austin and his team repair, refurbish and upgrade the device to get it back in working order to sell in bulk as a second-hand device.
“People buying our devices are saving 50 per cent on the recommended retail price for a functionally comparable new device,” he added.
Whatever can’t be fixed and resold, is sent to a recycling partner for the different metals within the device to be melted down into metals like copper, gold and aluminium, which is then sent to Australian companies to manufacture into new products.
“We don’t have the plant and equipment to melt the devices into its base metals, that’s the next step for the business,” Austin noted.
Fliptech is partnering with Royal Far West, the Manly-based charity dedicated to connecting kids in rural and remote communities to the care they need.
“Our aim is, for every client we collect from, to put aside one refurbished device to donate to Royal Far West to use as they see fit – whether that is giving it to a kid in a rural community with limited access to educational resources, or to support workers out in the field,” Austin explained.
According to The Global E-Waste Monitor 2024, Australia recorded 580 million kg of e-waste in 2022, making us the highest e-waste generator in Oceania. That equates to an average of 22 kg per person. In comparison, USA produced 7,200 million kg of e-waste in 2022 – 21 kg per person and China produced 12,000 million kg – 22 kg per person.
Moreover, 62 billion kg of e-waste generated globally in 2022, only 22.3 per cent was formally collected and recycled, according to the report.
“The rise in e-waste generation is outpacing the rise in formal recycling by a factor of almost 5 – driven by technological progress, higher consumption, limited repair options, short product lifecycles, growing electronification and inadequate e-waste management infrastructure – and has thus outstripped the rise in formal and environmentally sound collection and recycling,” the report stated.
“Four out of five devices are not property recycled, and this is mostly in the corporate sector,” Austin explained.
“I call IT managers of big corporates, and they can’t explain what happens to their redundant IT equipment when contractors come to remove it.”
In 2019, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) found, “Australians only recover a third of the total value of the materials in the e-waste we generate. This means in 2019 alone, Australians sent $430 million worth of materials to landfill along with their e-waste.”
Austin said while for a lot of asset disposition companies the goal is revenue, at Fliptech it’s about the principle to recycle as much as possible to avoid the harmful impact these devices left in landfill can do on the environment.
“My philosophy has always been people who do the right thing in the short term, win in the long term,” he said.
