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Mounting pile: The problem of e-waste is throwing up new challenges.

e-waste includes both valuable as well as harmful materials which require special handling and recycling methods. Components contain toxic, hazardous substances such as lead and arsenic. The recycling processes and disposal of these components, while being a lucrative business proposition for some, pose serious health and environment hazards. This is contributing to the pollution levels of the country, which has so far failed to attract interest.

Almost half of the PCs sold in India are products from the secondary market and are re-assembled on old components. According to the 2003 annual report of MAIT, ‘Multinationals account for 30 per cent and domestic brands 22 per cent of e-waste’. Manufacturers are also major contributors. The waste consists of defective IC chips, motherboards, CRTs and other peripheral items produced during the production process. It also includes defective PCs under guarantee, procured from consumers as replacement items. According to MAIT, ‘by the end of 2005-06, India had an installed base of 4.64 million desktops, about 0.43 million notebooks and 89,000 servers’. MAIT estimates that the Indian PC industry is growing at a 25 per cent compounded annually.

Statistics show that in India, the volume of imported electronic waste began increasing in 2002, reaching an estimated 50,000 tonnes a year currently. “Last year, India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests prepared a bill to regulate the import of such electronic waste. India produces more than 1.5 lakh tonnes of its own electronic waste every year, a figure that is expected to increase given the country’s booming economy. The increasing ‘market penetration’ in developing countries, ‘replacement market’ in developed countries and ‘high obsolescence rate’ make e-waste one of the fastest waste streams,” says Ramakumar Purushotham, Associate Vice President-Energy Upstream, Enzen Global Solutions, an energy and environment consulting firm.

“Among the top 10 cities generating e-waste, Mumbai ranks first followed by Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune, Surat and Nagpur. There is no large scale organised e-waste recycling facility in India and the entire recycling exists in the unorganised sector. There are two small WEEE/E-waste dismantling facilities functioning in Chennai and Bangalore,” he adds.

The accrued electronic and electric waste is dismantled and sorted manually to fractions printed wiring boards (PWB), cathode ray tubes (CRT), cables, plastics, metals, condensers and others like batteries and LCDs. The valuable fractions are treated in refining and conditioning processes. The different e-waste fractions are processed to directly reusable components and to secondary raw materials in a variety of refining and conditioning processes.

“With the advancement in innovation, product obsolescence is becoming rapid and the dynamism of product manufacturing and marketing has resulted in a shorter life span (less than two years) for many computer products. Shorter product life span coupled with an exponential increase at an average 15 per cent per year would lead to enormous increase of e-wastes over the next few years,” says Ramakumar.

In the absence of proper disposal methods, it finds its way to scrap dealers, and is further pushed to dismantlers. The potential of increased e-waste generation and lack of adequate recycling facilities has attracted the attention of a number of recyclers globally, expressing interest to start recycling facilities in India.

“The need of the hour is to maintain a list of components and their contents with respect to e-waste, and regulatory compliances for its collection, transportation, storage, treatment, processing, and recycling”, advises Ramakumar. This would ensure availability of e-waste for treatment facilities.

An organisation consisting of industries or industry associations at the national and local level can be made responsible for collection and transportation of e-waste. It will act as an important link between e-waste generators and dismantlers. In the absence of such an organisation, the waste treatment facility operators will integrate backwards with generators, which will have higher cost implications.

The equipment used in a dismantling facility is recommended to be covered under pollution control equipment so that the treatment facility can charge 100 per cent depreciation in the first year. This will improve the financial viability of an e-waste facility. The facility should also be categorised as an infrastructure development project so that it can get the benefits for such projects in India.

MYTHILI G. NIRVAN

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