Over 40 million tonnes e-waste generated globally each year: Kapil Sibal

NEW DELHI: Around 40-50 million tonnes of electronics waste is generated globally every year out of which India accounts for just 0.8 million, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal today said.

"By the time, market in domestic industry becomes buoyant, people get concerned about enormity of the market and then western world starts yelling us that we must start managing e-waste," Sibal at an event organised by IFC and Attero.

E-waste describes discarded electrical or electronic devices.

Slamming the western world for their interest in only trade with India, the Minister said they should realise the importance of managing environmental impact on consumers in other parts of the world.

"The western world encourages liberalisation and wants to encourage global trade. It persuades rest of the world to lower tariff barrier so that it can export products in to India," Sibal said.

"Around 90 per cent of the components are imported from outside and they are assembled here. There is no real domestic (electronics) manufacturing industry," he said.

The Minister said the end-to-end responsibility to manage a e-waste should be fall on those who originally make the product.

"Yet I am very happy that we are talking about end-to- end solution about e-waste management in India," he said.

The Minister said that there are 23 organised firms in the country that process electronics waste and around 3,000 players in non-formal sector which needs to converted in to formal process.