Meet Prof Veena Sahajwalla, an IIT-trained Indo-Australian scientist who has pioneered the world's first micro factory to breakdown and repurpose e-waste.
She was in New Delhi last week, where she said that her technology can be deployed at Seelampur and Mayapuri to help "kabadiwallas" (waste collectors) make profit by creating value-added products from waste materials in a safe and sustainable manner.
Sahajwalla, a materials scientist and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, says the micro factories will not ¡°displace¡± the kabadiwallas from their profession but help add to income generation and improve their lives in a big way.
A recipient of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman for outstanding achievement in science among numerous other awards, Prof Veena Sahajwalla says the micro factories can be effectively deployed in Seelampur and other places where people work with waste, including e-waste, to create value-added products like decorative glass panels, acoustic panels with waste cloth and high-grade wood-plastic panels.
The high-grade metals ¨C like gold, silver, copper, palladium - in the e-waste can be separated by the micro factories for re-sale in conditions that are totally safe.
Sahajwalla says that plastic comprises 40 percent of the e-waste and is usually burnt, adding to air pollution. ¡°There is no reason to burn plastic as micro factories can create filament with plastic,¡± she said at an interaction with the media.
Just to give an example: One tonne of mobile phones includes 6,000 handsets, which contains 130 kg of copper, 3.5 kg of silver, 340 gm of gold and 140 gm of palladium. All that can be extracted from the micro factory invented by Prof Veena Sahajwalla.
The Mumbai-born Sahajwalla, who did her B.Tech in metallurgical engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1986, came up with her pioneering micro factory invention (which is patented) at UNSW, which was launched at the varsity earlier this year.
According to Sahajwalla, material science students from India, including one doctoral and one post doctoral, are doing cutting-edge research at UNSW. She also said she would be happy to welcome and train any student with interest in sustainability to enroll at UNSW. Students could include entrepreneurs and graduates from different disciplines of engineering -- civil, material science, textiles, polymers, material sciences.
The Global E-waste Monitor claims in a report published by the United Nations University that humanity generated 44.7 million metric tons of e-waste in 2016, which is equivalent to 6.1 kilograms per person. According to the report¡¯s findings, just 20 percent of e-waste was properly recycled in 2016.
The vast majority (80 percent) was undocumented, likely to be dumped, traded or recycled under inferior conditions.