Time for India to Take a Close, Hard Look at e-Waste

My first recollection of waste recycling is that of disheveled kids roaming the streets of Delhi. They have large plastic bags and whenever they spot a discarded but “valuable” item—a plastic bottle, a rusted iron rod or the like—they toss it into the bag and move forward in search for more.

At that time I was amused by what I saw (I knew they would sell their stuff to the local kabadiwala, the scrap dealer, for a paltry sum.)

Now, several years later, amusement about a curious aspect of waste collection has turned into a loathing for how the entire “waste situation” looks. As I came to know about the trash piling up in landfills, about chemicals from discarded objects leaching into soil and water (often winding their way into the bloodstream of humans and other animals, with toxic effects), and about the devastatingly fast-growing proportion of e-waste in the overall junk, my disgust only intensified.

An estimated 40-50 million tons of all kinds of electronic waste (from computers and phones to TVs and washing machines) is generated globally each year. In India, it is around 1 million tons, but growing faster than many developed countries.

What is more appalling is that much of this e-waste—a whopping 85-90%—is either dumped or handled hazardously. And while advanced economies such as the U.S. regularly consume and discard the bulk of electronics, the trash ends up in third-world countries of Asia and Africa.

But there is a glimmer of hope. A growing awareness and sense of responsibility at government, corporate and individual levels is driving home the need to deal with all that e-waste in an environmentally friendly manner.

In India a right step in that direction was taken in 2011 in the shape of the e-Waste Management and Handling Act. A key part of this regulation is the EPR (extended producer responsibility) clause, which puts the onus of responsibly warehousing or disposing of the e-waste on manufacturers.

Another green development is that several watchdogs, recyclers and e-waste services firms are cropping up in the country.

However, all this is still a small start to a very large and complex problem. For one, recycling should not be equated with passing on the collected e-waste to the unorganized sector (which often employs women and children to retrieve metals and components from the devices through burning or manual dismantling).

In addition, both the government and the corporate sectors should make efforts to grow awareness about the regulation and product take-back programs—and there should be a proper mechanism to monitor such programs and provision for punitive measures, if necessary.

Managing e-waste well is more than a matter of health for all those directly affected by toxicity of the materials: it is a big question mark over the survival of the whole planet.