Delhi and Bengaluru follow.
By Sreekanth A. Nair
India is one of the largest markets of electronic durables. The rise in personal income and increased awareness about technology have lead to a surge in the sales of electronic goods in recent years.
But the growth of electronic goods industry has raised some serious questions about the disposal of the used items. Recently, the ministry of environment, forest, and climate change has categorized the electronic waste disposal business as a red category industry, citing the pollution it makes.
The ministry said that the e-waste disposal industry is the biggest threat to the environment since it generates the highest pollution load in the sector.
Mumbai has the highest volume of e-waste followed by Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Kolkata. Apart from a few registered companies, many unauthorized entities are running in the sector.
These unauthorized firms don’t have the facility to process and dispose the e-waste properly and hazardous substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, halogenated substances, polychlorinated biphenyls, and polybrominated di-phenyl ethers are directly discharged into the soil posing a threat to the environment.
They also pose a threat to the health of the workers as they are dismantling the waste manually without any precaution.
“There is no disposal system at these places, and the waste is eventually dumped into the Yamuna,” Piyush Mohapatra of Toxics Link, an environmental NGO, told The Times of India.
These hazardous substances affect both soil and the groundwater. These wastes are also dumped into rivers and other water bodies.
Many of the elements like lead, mercury and cadmium may cause damage to the central and peripheral nervous systems. They also affect the brain development of children and destruct the circulatory system, kidneys, and the reproductive system.
As children are illegally used in the industry, they are also prone to such serious health issues. A report of Assocham-Frost & Sullivan said that the e-waste processing industry uses five lakh children between the ages of 10 and 14.
ASSOCHAM-Frost & Sullivan study has noted that the annual electronic waste created in India is likely to reach 30 lakh metric tons (MT) by 2018 from the present level of 18.5 lakh MT.
As the Central Government has tightened the rules governing the e-waste industry the companies are expected to be monitored frequently and irregularities are corrected.
“Unless the informal sector is formalized or made to be part of a defined e-waste supply chain, it will defeat the purpose that the government intends to achieve,” Radhika Kalia, a spokesperson for CEAMA, an industry body of electronics manufacturers told The Hindu.
For making the waste disposal process more effective, experts suggest a recycling fund as practiced in the US and Europe where the consumers have to pay an additional amount when they purchase electronic goods and the same is reimbursed when they return the product to an authorized disposal firm.