Who needs this trash?

TALLINN - Independent Estonian member of the European Parliament, Indrek Tarand, has called for the people of Estonia to return, en masse, the kroons-to-euro conversion calculators to the Ministry of Finance, reports news agency LETA. “Why does the Republic of Estonia have to manufacture the trash?” said Tarand at a waste management conference in the capital.

“Who needs it? I have the right to take it back to the Ministry of Finance. The electronics company has to refund the products that it has produced. I’m calling for everyone to take back the unopened euro calculators to the Ministry of Finance,” he said.

The calculators arrived in Estonia on Nov. 2, 2010, and will be distributed to 561,000 mailboxes in Estonia, as the country prepares to switch its currency, from kroons to euros, on Jan. 1 next year. The first to receive the calculators were those living in Voru County in southern Estonia.

The government has allocated one calculator per household with 20,000 calculators ordered for reserve.
Procured from China, the euro calculators cost the taxpayer 300,400 euros. Each calculator has a warranty that is effective until September 15, 2012, well past the currency switch-over date.