Electronic firms to enlist official dumping centers

Bangalore: According to a national survey conducted by an international NGO, India generates a whopping four lakh tons of hazardous e-waste from electronic products every year. At this point, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has proposed a new policy on the disposal of E-waste.

E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2010, make it mandatory for all manufacturers and dealers of E-products to mention the addresses of places where the consumers can discard the electronic gadgets, once they become obsolete or are ready to be recycled, reports Renuka Phadnis of Bangalore Mirror. After Europe and the U.S., India is the first
nation among developing countries to draft such a proposal.


The proposed law will make it mandatory for the all manufacturers to come up with a unique identification code for each of their products.

Manufacturers will be responsible for setting up collection centers to keep an eye on the process and ensure that the hazardous products are handled by registered dismantlers or recyclers in order to control the possible damage to the environment and human health.

The fact that almost all obsolete electronic items have components believed to be carcinogenic is something that cannot be ignored, said an MoEF official. While the draft policy does not deal with individual consumers, bulk clients like banks, MNCs and other big companies will now have to deposit their e-waste at authorized collection centres instead of selling them to local wholesale scrap shops.

"Bulk consumer will also have to file annual returns on the quantity of the e-waste disposed. After Europe and the US, India is the first nation among developing countries to draft such a proposal," the MoEF official said.

The draft rules, in the public domain (http://moef.nic.in/index.php) for two months, have been received positively by many.

"Bigger companies recognise the value of safe disposal but hundreds of other companies don't care a damn. This notification will force people who did not dispose of e-waste correctly," said Electronics City Industries Association (ELCIA) CEO Prakash Rao.

Once the rules are in force, companies can't sell e-waste to any scrap dealer. Rao said only 10-15 percent of companies in Bangalore dispose of e-waste correctly. The rest sell to scrap dealers as a cost is involved in following responsible disposal. Besides, selling to scrap dealers is a source of income for some companies. Scrap dealers take whatever can be reused and throw away the rest in ways considered dangerous.

Wilma Rodrigues, founder member of Saahas, an NGO that deals with solutions for solid waste management in Bangalore, said authorised e-waste re-cyclers in Bangalore are running below capacity because they don't get enough material to recycle.