India Generates Around 2.5 Million Metric Tonnes Of E-Waste Annually, Only 1.5 Percent Of It Gets Recycled

We all celebrate buying new gadgets every year - yeah, some lucky chaps do it every month. With the rapid improvements in tech, which makes an existing gadget outdated in a couple of hours, India is one of the fastest-growing Electronic waste (e-waste) generators in the world. India is ranked fifth globally as one of its largest producers after the US, China, Japan, and Germany, according to the Global E-Waste Monitor.

The country produces around 2.5 million metric tonnes of e-waste annually including discarded computer monitors, motherboards, mobile phones and chargers, compact discs, headphones, television sets, air conditioners, and refrigerators.

Over the years, the country has seen an average annual growth of 30% in the amount of e-waste generated in the country. While the trend is only likely to continue or even increase in the future due to the changing consumer habits and technological advancements, the piling up of e-waste is a matter of concern for the country.

This is because, just around 1.5 per cent of all the e-waste which is generated in the country gets recycled by the formal sector. The rest ends up in landfills or are thrown away in the open, and thus become a health risk. India's inability to process is mounting e-waste has been blamed on several reasons including the lack of strict laws, proper collection, and recycling mechanisms and a lack of awareness about the need for recycling e-waste.

Karo Sambhav a Gurugram-based Producer Responsibility Organisation has been trying to bridge the gaps in the collection and processing of e-waste. Ever since it was founded in 2017, Karo Sambhav has established its presence in 29 states, 3 union territories, and over 60 cities and is working with several top companies as part of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).

The concept of EPR was first introduced in India in the E-Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011 and under this, producers of electronic goods responsible for waste production management. The amendment to the e-waste policy, with the new E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2016, set stringent targets for the producers to collect and recycle end-of-life products of their goods.

However, since a large portion of waste collection is done by the informal sector implementation of EPR is a big challenge for India. And that is where Karo Sambhav has been able to make a difference in the past couple of years. With its network of around 30 companies, including Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Cisco, Toshiba, Ericsson, 2515 schools, 520 bulk consumers, 1007 repair shops, 5,000 informal sector workers including waste pickers and waste aggregators they have managed to bring a lot more e-waste to the recycling ecosystem.

"India today generates over 2.5 million metric tonnes of e-waste and we have had no systemic solution for this. The consumption patterns of Indians are changing and that will only produce more and more e-waste. Dumping them in landfills is not a solution," Pranshu Singhal, the Founder of Karo Sambhav said.

"This is where the government brought in the concept of EPR in India, which has been in practice globally for more than two decades. In practice, EPR means the producer who is producing any electronic product has a larger role in recycling the product, be it by financing or by setting up recycling plants," Singhal added.

In 2017, when the EPR targets were set for companies, there was no infrastructure or ecosystem that could solve the problem.

"At Karo Sambhav, we aim at mapping an end-to-end solution and some success stories about doing responsible recycling in a systematic way. We started with 4-5 brands and have now scaled up to more 30 brands. We offer them solutions for documentation creating citizen awareness campaigns, creating collection channels, and meeting specific recycling targets set for each company," Singhal explained.

When the government introduced EPR the companies were initially given a target of recycling 10 per cent of their e-waste in 2017, which has since been increased by 10 per cent every year. Being 30 percent for 2019, this will continue until it reaches 70 per cent recycling. Singhal said the biggest challenge in recycling e-waste is to get it collected, which is mostly done in the informal sector, by waste pickers and scrap dealers.

"In the nearly three years that we have been operational, Karo Sambhav has been able to establish a network of over 5000 informal sector workers who are selling their goods to us. All of these are properly marked and can be traced back at any time. We also got many companies and schools to join our movement and we collect dead electronic goods from them. We have also got many RWA where collection boxes are set up for people to drop their discarded electronic goods. We also conduct extensive awareness campaigns to educate people on the need for e-waste recycling," he said.

Singhal said another major challenge is to get individuals and households to come forward to get their discarded electronic goods to the recycling system.

"If you take an average house, there will be around 10 kgs of e-waste lying around, which is not sold because of how little they are worth when it is sold to a scrap dealer. People should stop thinking about what they can earn from selling it for scrap and realize that the responsibility to keep the environment clean lies with them too. That is the mentality that we are trying to change through our awareness campaigns," he said.

There is an acute shortage of e-waste recycling infrastructure in the country when compared to the amount of waste generated and the quality of the treatment of them is still questionable. Karo Sambhav has identified and is working towards establishing more and more enterprises to establish proper recycling plants across the country.

"The recycling process is still evolving. It will take at least a few more years before we can have a proper system in place that can recover maximum value from e-waste. Today what is happening is just the extraction of the valuable parts. But the most important thing - what happens to the toxic substance like lead, lithium-ion battery, liquid crystal display, printed circuit boards(PCBs) is still unclear. This is just about the formal recyclers, we are not even talking about the informal sector where there are several gray areas including the health risk of those involved in the segregation and disassembling process," Singhal said.

He also said that currently, the parts extracted from e-waste are downcycled and used to make a different product or of inferior quality, but expressed hope that in a few years with the advancement in the process the recycled goods can be used in premium quality gadgets too.