Time to regulate e-waste Industry

E-waste is any electrical or electronic equipment that’s been discarded. This includes working and broken items that are thrown in the garbage or donated to a charity reseller like Goodwill. Often, if the item goes unsold in the store, it will be thrown away. E-waste is particularly dangerous due to toxic chemicals that naturally leach from the metals inside when buried.

Two categories of electrical and electronic equipment namely IT and Telecommunication Equipment and Consumer Electricals and Electronics such as TVs, Washing Machines, Refrigerators, Air Conditioners including fluorescent and other mercury containing lamps are covered under the E-waste management Rules. The main feature, of these rules, is Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).

According to a Toxics Link study on the thriving informal e-waste sector in Delhi NCR in 2018, nearly 5,000 e-waste processing units, mostly in east Delhi, were functioning without proper guidelines, precautions or norms.

An e-waste recycling plan is a type of sustainability effort or program that seeks to collect old electronics from around the corporation and safely dispose of them through a certified electronics recycling company. After all, it’s no secret that recycling electronics aids in environmental protection.

90% of the e-waste - Computer/ Laptops/Server/Storage/ Mobile Phones in Delhi is not being recycled. Rather it is further resale after doing minimal repairs/changes and then repack, sold as the refurbished products.

A subject matter expert says, generally a product comes to the e-waste after the corporates use it for a minimum period of three years, who generally buys in bulk quantities. The e-waste companies take the products for e-waste in Kilogram and Tons for recycling but the interesting thing is they reuse in various ways.

Experts suggest, for example, when any gadget comes out for e-waste, every product comes with a serial number. The authority has to do proper checks and balances to implement proper e-waste programmes.

As per E-waste the product which has burnt or put under recycled, the e-waste company has to provide the serial number of the destroyed products and that has to notify the respective company. Secondly, during the process of e-waste, if disposed improperly, e-waste can lead to some serious health dangers to both us and our environment. With this it could regulate thousands of crores of fraud in the e-waste business.

Over the last decade, the consumption of electronics has boomed. Unfortunately, with the use of more devices comes more discarded products collectively known as e-waste. In fact, experts predict that 74 million tons of electronic waste will be generated by 2030.