E-waste: electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), whole or in part discarded as waste by the consumer or bulk consumer as well as rejects from manufacturing, refurbishment and repair processes.
India's e-Waste Problem
India’s e-waste expected to rise to 5.2MT by 2020 and continue to increase as the use of electronic equipment shoots up. Maharashtra | Delhi | Chennai | Kolkata highest contributing States.
While 70% of e-waste in India is produced by Public & Private Sector, 15% contribution is from household and rest is by the Manufactures.
As 90% of India’s e-waste is informally recycled or left in landfills, It causes number of environmental and health problems.
Policies
E-waste (Management) Rules 2016 replaced the existing E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011. The concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mandated producers of electrical and electronic equipment to register and specified targets to collect back e-waste generated and to ensure that it is channelized to authorized recyclers.
Imports of e-waste for disposal are banned in India.
Policy Failure
No mechanisms to verify if the Rules are followed in the EPR process.
Fail in effective monitoring
Majority of producers outsource their e-waste to the informal sector.
Way Forward
The planet needs is a future where recyclers buy back electronics, manufacturers use second-generation materials and consumers get rid of e-waste responsibly.
By 2020, the country’s electronic waste management sector is set to create 450,000 direct jobs across collection, aggregation, dismantling and recycling.
E-waste is imported as second hand products and India lacks resources & Infrastructure to distinguish between second-hand product & e-waste (IFC 2019)
Economic Value of e-waste: the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo—all the medals will be made from precious metals collected from recycled e-waste. More than five million used phones were collected from among 47,488 tonnes of discarded electronic devices, after a nationwide scheme was launched across Japan by the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee in April 2017.