The biggest threat to the ecology today is e waste.With the rapid changing innovations in the techno gadgets compel the consumers to throw the used e products. In the world of fast moving riches who cares about the second hand products. In order to clear these e wastes governments ship it and dumb it in poor countries. In India several of the western ships have been caught with health devastating junks. It is high time that we minimise the craze for gadgets and responsibly use these products to avoid further damage to the environment


Atul Sethi writes in The Times of India 25 October

Nazaqat Ali works with a scrap yard dealer in Delhi. Every day, he sorts out piles of junk brought in by kabaadiwaalas, separating re-usable


components for re-sale and dismantling waste. The instructions from Ali’s boss are precise – recover whatever can be sold and dump the rest. Accordingly, he goes about his job with mechanical precision. Wires are burnt out in the open air in order to extract metal. Computer monitors are broken manually to recover glass. Circuit boards are heated or dipped in acid to get at the metal within.

The residue is dumped in a landfill. Chemicals are often flushed into municipal drains. Ali says he’s just doing his job. But, what he and others like him involved in recycling waste don’t realize is that they’re contributing to a huge and growing problem – careless disposal of electronic or e-waste.

Today, e-waste is the fastest growing component of municipal waste. That’s because people now upgrade mobile phones, computers and televisions more frequently than before. If they are not properly recycled, they became a health and environmental hazard.

In India, more than 95% of e-waste recycling is carried out in slums dotted around Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and other big cities. “All the activities in these recycling hubs involve the use of bare hands and poor work practices,” says Jeevesh Kumar of e-waste management company Greenspace. The risks are many. Burnt cable wires means soil and water contamination. Inhaling toxic elements in e-waste components can cause respiratory, carcinogenic and neural disorders.

What is especially worrying is the rate at which e-waste piles up. According to a study by the Manufacturer’s Association of Information Technology (MAIT), a forum of Indian IT products’ manufacturers, 380,000 tonnes of e-waste were generated across the country in 2007. The consumption of electronics items continues to grow apace and e-waste is consequently expected to exceed 470,000 tonnes by 2011. “If corrective action is not taken soon, this could snowball into a significant environmental concern for India,” says MAIT’s executive director Vinnie Mehta.

What’s more, many countries are using India as a dumping ground for e-trash. According to one recent estimate, more than 50,000 metric tonnes of e-waste is dumped in India every year, sometimes in the guise of charity. Most of it ends up in informal recycling yards. “Thanks to complex, ambiguous definitions of second-hand electronic equipment, the customs department finds it difficult to trace, identify and stop this illegal in-flow of e-waste,” says Abhishek Pratap of activist group Greenpeace.

The flip side is that e-waste means good money for recyclers. In Delhi alone, the informal recycling business is estimated to be worth more than Rs 2,000 cr., generated mostly from the resale of old computers and metal extracted from silicon chips and PC motherboards. “Around 30,000 people are involved in informal e-waste recycling in India, of which about 5,000 are in the Capital alone,” says Priti Mahesh of Toxics Link, a Delhi NGO.

Only a fraction of India’s e-waste gets to recycling companies in the organized sector, which are able to deal with it in a safe way. Government directives offer little clarity on proper e-waste disposal. “There is an urgent need for drafting a policy and creating regulations for e-waste management in India,” says P Parthasarthy of E-Parisara, a Bangalore based e-waste recycling company.

Recently, major Indian stakeholders in e-waste management came together to draft a set of rules for good management of e-waste. The rules have been submitted to the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
Mehta of MAIT insists the “challenge that the problem poses is huge.” But, so are the consequences of inaction, since the e-waste time bomb is ticking away fast