IT sector largest generator of e-waste; underutilised recycling capacity

BENGALURU: India's IT hub is among the largest generators of electronic waste in the country, trailing only Mumbai and Delhi, but the city's sizable recycling capacity goes woefully underutilised a problem environment authorities don't seem equipped to control. Only about 10 per cent of Bengaluru's e-waste recycling capacity of 37,000 tonne is utilised, the Environmental Management and Policy Research Institute found, and a majority of the e waste generated in the city is channeled to unauthorised collectors, resulting in dis astrous consequences.According to S Venkatesh Shekhar, senior envi ronment officer at Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), many bulk con sumers prefer to resell old electronic and elec trical equipment in in formal markets than to make the effort to dispose these off at the authorised recy clers. “It's mostly people like the managers in IT companies who make profit through this,“ he said. “The KSPCB can not stop this through raids.“

Electronic waste refers to anything from refrigerators and washing machines to mobile phones and laptops that can no longer be used. Under Indian law, these should be disposed at centers authorised to process such waste, after scientifically extracting metals such as gold, silver, copper, platinum, lead, arsenic, lithium and mercury .

The onus is on the generators of the e waste to collect and transport the expired equipment to authorised recycling centers, for which they get no money in return.

Unauthorised collectors, on the other hand, offer money for any e-waste they get.But they typically do not follow any scientific or safe process to extract the metals, which they then resell, and have no option but to burn any residue as they are not allowed to dump waste in the landfill at Dobaspet. Yet, many consumers would rather have the recyclers organise collections than invest more on waste management, said P Parthasarathy , MD of E-Parisaraa, a government authorised e-waste recycler in Peenya industrial area.

The law seems to be handicapped, said Priti Mahesh, chief program coordinator at Toxics Link, a Delhi-based non-profit that studies the effect of poisonous substances present in the environment. “The law should specify the number of collection centers for each state,“ Mahesh said, adding that the law doesn't specify how government bodies should monitor ewaste disposal.

Under the `E-waste Management and Handling Rule' of 2011, bulk consumers of electronic and electrical equipment have to dispose the e-waste they generate to authorised collection centers or recyclers, and maintain records of the e-waste they produce for scrutiny by the state pollution control boards. But that alone may not be enough, say experts.

You don' t have to look beyond Bengaluru's children to find the impact of the disregard for even this basic requirement. In about one-third of the city's children, the presence of lead in their blood has increased to about 10 micrograms per 100 ml in the past 16 years, much above the permissible 5 mg as per WHO standards, said Dr. Thuppil Venkatesh, chief of the National Referral Centre for Lead Projects. The reason for all this, according to the doctor? The increasing pollution caused by the rampant incineration of ewaste containing lead, including lead-acid batteries.