The National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme is why recycling an old TV or computer is free for Australian households. It is an industry-funded national scheme that pays for the responsible recycling of televisions, computers, and their parts. This guide explains what it covers, who pays for it, what it does not cover, and where a business fits, because the scheme is built for households, not commercial volumes.
The National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme (NTCRS) is an Australian Government product-stewardship scheme, funded by the television and computer industry, that provides free recycling of televisions, computers, and computer parts for households and small business. It has operated since 2011, is delivered through approved co-regulatory arrangements, and works to a high material-recovery target so that most of each device is recovered rather than sent to landfill. It is the reason a household can drop an old TV or laptop at a council point or event and pay nothing. What it does not cover is just as important: mobile phones, batteries, and large business volumes sit outside the scheme.
If you have ever wondered why recycling a television is free but there seemed to be rules about what and where, the NTCRS is the answer. It is the funding engine behind most free household e-waste recycling for TVs and computers in Australia. Understanding what it covers, and what it does not, saves a wasted trip and tells you when you need a different channel. This guide lays it out, using facts from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), which administers the scheme.
The scale and design of the scheme, from named sources.
The NTCRS is a form of product stewardship: the principle that the companies that put products on the market should help pay for managing them at end of life. Under the scheme, the manufacturers and importers of televisions and computers fund the collection and recycling of those products once households and small businesses are finished with them. That industry funding is what makes the service free at the point of use; you are not charged because the cost has already been covered upstream.
The scheme is administered by the Australian Government through DCCEEW and delivered on the ground by a small number of approved co-regulatory arrangements, organisations that arrange the actual collection points, events, and recycling on behalf of the industry. Those arrangements set up the drop-off points at councils, transfer stations, and participating retailers, and send the collected equipment to recyclers that must meet the scheme's standards, including a high material-recovery target. The result is a national network that turns old TVs and computers back into recovered materials rather than landfill.
The reason it is called a co-regulatory scheme is worth understanding, because it explains why the service feels consistent nationwide even though many organisations are involved. Rather than the government running the collection itself, the law sets the obligations and the targets, and industry-funded organisations, the co-regulatory arrangements, take on the responsibility of meeting them. A small number of these approved arrangements operate across the country, each responsible for collecting and recycling a share of the televisions and computers sold, and each accountable to the government for hitting the scheme's recovery target. It is a partnership model: the government sets the rules and checks compliance, and industry funds and delivers the outcome. That structure is why you can drop a television at a council point in one suburb and a transfer station in another and get the same free, standards-based recycling in both.
TV and computer manufacturers and importers pay into the scheme, covering the cost of recycling their products at end of life.
Approved organisations set up collection points and events and manage recycling on the industry's behalf.
Households and small businesses take TVs and computers to a participating point at no charge. Find one on Recycling Near You.
Approved recyclers dismantle the equipment to a high recovery target, keeping hazardous materials out of landfill.
The name is specific: televisions and computers. Knowing the boundary saves you a wasted trip.
Because different recyclers deliver the scheme, the exact list accepted at a given drop-off can vary slightly, so it is always worth a quick check before you travel. For the household picture across every channel, including the items the scheme does not cover, see our guide on how to recycle electronics in Australia, and for council-run points specifically, our Sydney council e-waste guide.
The NTCRS is designed for households and small quantities. For a home clearing out an old television or a couple of computers, it is free and straightforward: find a participating drop-off on Recycling Near You, confirm they take your item, and drop it off. Some small businesses can also use scheme points for small quantities, though this varies by arrangement and location.
Where the scheme stops is at commercial volume. A business retiring a fleet of computers, clearing an office, or decommissioning a server room is not what the household scheme is built to handle, and it also has a requirement the scheme does not address: data destruction. The NTCRS recycles the hardware; it does not erase the data on the drives or give a business the certificate it needs to prove the data was destroyed. That is why business e-waste goes through a certified commercial recycler instead, which handles the volume, the logistics, and the data with documentation. The two systems are complementary: the NTCRS keeps household TVs and computers out of landfill, and a certified provider does the same for business, with the added data-security layer that businesses are legally required to have.
If you are disposing of equipment on behalf of an organisation, the free household scheme is not the right channel. ITC provides certified business collection across Sydney and NSW, with data destroyed to the NIST 800-88 standard and per-device certificates, free for qualifying volumes. See how free business pickup works or the e-waste recycling service.
A device dropped at a scheme point does not simply disappear; it enters a recovery process designed to pull as much usable material back out of it as possible. Collected televisions and computers are transported to an approved recycler, where they are dismantled and separated into their component streams. Hazardous parts, such as the leaded glass in older cathode-ray-tube televisions and the mercury in some flat-screen backlights, are removed and handled safely so they never reach landfill or leach into the environment.
What remains is a surprising amount of value. A television or computer is largely made of recoverable material: steel and aluminium from the casing and chassis, copper from wiring and boards, precious metals in small quantities on the circuit boards, glass, and various plastics. These are separated and sent to downstream processors that turn them back into feedstock for new manufacturing. This is why the scheme sets a high material-recovery target for its recyclers: the goal is not just to keep e-waste out of landfill, but to genuinely recover the materials so they re-enter the economy rather than being lost. For the full end-to-end journey, our guide on what happens to e-waste after collection follows it in detail.
The NTCRS is one piece of a wider product-stewardship system. Knowing which scheme covers which item tells you where to take everything the TV-and-computer scheme does not.
| Scheme | What it covers | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| NTCRS | Televisions, computers, laptops, monitors, printers, and computer parts and peripherals | Free for households |
| MobileMuster | Mobile phones, chargers, and phone accessories, funded by the mobile phone industry | Free |
| B-cycle | Batteries, through drop points at retailers such as Bunnings and at councils | Free |
| Council services | A broader range of household e-waste and small electronics, varying by council | Usually free |
| Certified commercial recyclers | Business e-waste of any type, including data destruction and certificates | Often free for qualifying volumes |
Each of these schemes works on the same product-stewardship idea: the industry that sells a product helps fund its recycling. The reason there are several rather than one is that different products have different materials, hazards, and recycling processes. For you, the practical takeaway is simple: match the item to the scheme, and use our how to recycle electronics guide when you are not sure which applies.
The NTCRS was established in 2011 under Australia's product-stewardship legislation, at a time when televisions and computers were among the fastest-growing and most problematic parts of the waste stream. The switch to digital television had accelerated the retirement of old sets, and household computer ownership was climbing, so a national, industry-funded scheme was created to make sure those products were recycled responsibly rather than dumped. It was one of the first major applications of the product-stewardship principle in Australian waste policy.
Since then the scheme has become part of the furniture of Australian recycling: the reason free TV and computer recycling exists, and the standard other e-waste handling is measured against. The wider direction of travel is toward more product stewardship, not less. New South Wales, for example, passed its Product Lifecycle Responsibility Act in 2025, extending lifecycle responsibility across more products including electronics. The NTCRS is the established, working example of what that approach looks like in practice for televisions and computers, and understanding it is a good way to understand where Australian e-waste policy is heading more broadly. Our guide to e-waste statistics in Australia sets out the numbers driving that direction.
Here is a point the scheme itself does not emphasise but you should not overlook: the NTCRS recycles the hardware, it does not erase your data. A computer dropped at a scheme point still has whatever was on its hard drive, and a recycler is not a data-destruction service. So before you hand over any device that stored information, deal with the data yourself.
For a household computer or laptop, back up anything you want to keep, sign out of your accounts, and run a full factory reset with encryption enabled before drop-off. That makes the data unrecoverable for practical purposes while still letting the device be recycled. Our guide on how to securely wipe data from an old laptop covers exactly how, and why a simple delete is not enough. For a business, the bar is higher again: a reset does not meet your obligations under the Privacy Act, so business equipment should be sanitised to a recognised standard with a certificate, which is one of the core reasons commercial e-waste goes through a certified provider rather than the household scheme.
A few practical habits make using the NTCRS quicker and keep your trip from being wasted.
Because different recyclers deliver the scheme, the exact items accepted vary by point. A quick check on Recycling Near You or a call to the drop-off saves a wasted trip with an item they cannot take.
The scheme recycles the device but does not erase it. Factory reset computers, laptops, and any device with storage before you drop it off.
Set aside phones for MobileMuster and batteries for B-cycle, rather than assuming a TV-and-computer point will take them.
If you have several items, a permanent Community Recycling Centre or a scheduled council e-waste event lets you clear them in one visit.
If you are clearing an office rather than a home, skip the household scheme and book a certified business collection that handles volume and data.
The NTCRS was created because e-waste is growing fast and holds both hazards and value. Figures from named sources.
Televisions and computers are among the bulkiest and most hazardous items in the household waste stream, containing materials such as leaded glass in older screens alongside recoverable metals and plastics. Left to individual choice and cost, much of it would end up in landfill. By funding free recycling through the industry that profits from selling the products, the NTCRS removes the cost barrier and channels those devices into proper recovery. It is product stewardship working as intended, and it is why the responsible option for a household TV or computer is also the free one.
There is a bigger point in this for how Australia deals with all e-waste. The NTCRS shows that when the cost of doing the right thing is removed, most people do it, and that funding recycling through the industry rather than the individual is a workable way to remove that cost. As e-waste volumes keep climbing and more products come under stewardship rules, that model is likely to expand. For a household, the takeaway is simply to use it: recycling your old television or computer through the scheme costs nothing and does genuine good. For a business, the takeaway is that the same responsible outcome is available, just through a certified commercial channel that adds the data security the household scheme was never designed to provide.
Common questions about the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme.
It is an Australian Government product-stewardship scheme, funded by the television and computer industry, that provides free recycling of televisions, computers, and computer parts for households and small business. It has operated since 2011, is administered by DCCEEW, and is delivered through approved co-regulatory arrangements that set up collection points and recycling nationwide.
Yes, for households. The scheme is funded by the industry, so households pay nothing to recycle televisions and computers at participating drop-off points and events. Some small businesses can use it for small quantities too. Larger business volumes fall outside the household scheme and use a commercial recycler instead.
Televisions, desktop computers, laptops, monitors, printers, scanners, and computer parts and peripherals such as hard drives, motherboards, keyboards, mice, and cables. Accepted items can vary slightly by drop-off point because different recyclers deliver the scheme, so check before you travel.
No. Mobile phones are not part of the NTCRS. They are covered by MobileMuster, the mobile phone industry's own free recycling program, which takes phones, chargers, and accessories. Batteries are handled separately again, through the B-cycle scheme at retailers and councils.
The manufacturers and importers of televisions and computers fund the scheme, under the product-stewardship principle that the companies putting products on the market should help pay for recycling them at end of life. That industry funding is why the service is free at the point of use for households.
Small businesses can sometimes use scheme points for small quantities, but the NTCRS is designed for households, not commercial volumes, and it does not include data destruction. A business retiring a fleet or clearing an office needs a certified commercial recycler that handles the volume and destroys the data with certificates. ITC provides this across Sydney and NSW.
Search your suburb on Planet Ark's Recycling Near You, which lists scheme drop-off points and council services near you, or check your council's waste page. Confirm the specific point accepts your item, then drop it off free of charge.
The NTCRS keeps household TVs and computers out of landfill. For business e-waste, ITC adds the volume, logistics, and certified data destruction the scheme does not, free for qualifying volumes across Sydney and NSW.
