Government plans to set up e-waste recycling unit in Bengaluru

The central government's Chemicals and Fertilizers Ministry intends to set up India’s first-ever, state-of-the-art e-waste recycling unit in Bengaluru. As India’s technology capital, Bengaluru produces an estimated one lakh tonne of electronic waste a year, according to an Economic Times report.

A research institute working under the government, called the Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology (CIPET), will set up the recycling unit in the next four months. Bengaluru minister for chemicals and fertilizers Ananth Kumar has said this will be replicated in many other parts of the country.

Bengaluru produces the third highest amount of e-waste in the country. The CIPET says technology for e-waste recycling has been developed and the waste will be converted into value-added products for different applications.

“The project would promote entrepreneurship opportunities for strategic utilisation of high-performance plastics and metal waste. The setup would broadly design eco-friendly techniques of managing and processing the e-waste in an organised manner,” Kumar said in a statement.

India’s e-waste production is increasing by 30 percent annually, of which only 5 percent is recycled and the rest is taken up by the unorganised sector. A large part of it is dumped in landfills.

Kumar added that every day, people dispose of 416,000 mobile devices and 142,000 computers by either recycling or disposing of in landfills.

Transporting the waste from user to the recycling plant is one of the major challenges that this project will face. Consumers mostly hand the waste to the waste-pickers.

“CIPET’s project should fill the gap in the existing informal sector. It should not break down the chain but should do high-end work and strengthen the existing system,” says Sandhya Narayan from Solid Waste Management Round Table.