Podcast | Digging Deeper - From trash to cash: Can India manage its e-waste responsibly?

Reema Moudgil  and Rakesh Sharma

A recent story on Moneycontrol reported that every year, India loses gold worth Rs 6,347 crore as part of e-waste. We also learnt that in 2016, India disposed 728 kilotonnes (kt) Iron, 96.8 kt copper, 110.6 kt Aluminium, 71 tonnes silver, 22 tonnes gold and 9 tonnes palladium. And basically discarded gold and silver worth Rs 6,347 crore and Rs 300 crore in a literal trash heap.

Significant in the report is the fact that India is throwing away valuables including precious metals such as gold, silver, palladium worth over Rs 18,677 crore as electronic waste every year. Electronic waste or e-waste describes discarded electrical or electronic devices. Used electronics which are destined for reuse, resale, salvage, recycling, or disposal are also considered e-waste.

On Digging Deeper with Moneycontrol, we dive deep into a toxic heap... well, thankfully, only in a metaphorical sense, to bring home the widespread issue of wasteful, e-waste in India.

We begin with this quote from the Moneycontrol piece, "According to a report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN agency working in the field of information and communication technologies, India discarded about 2 million tons, i.e. 2,000,000,000 kg electronic waste (e-waste) in 2016.

And, the number is increasing steadily every year. Globally, the world produced about 44.7 million tonnes e-waste in 2016 which is equal to the weight of 4,500 Eiffel towers. The per capita generation of e-waste was pegged at 6.1 kg. The e-waste contained metals and plastic worth Rs 4.21 lakh crore."

 The problem is both wastefulness and waste

Sure, what is disposed is waste, but it needn’t be wasteful. The discarded electronic and electrical equipment (EEE) contain numerous valuable and rare metals like lead, cadmium, aluminium, iron, gold, silver, palladium, copper etc many of which could be potentially hazardous.

The point is also not that copper worth Rs 3,262 crore and Aluminium worth Rs 1,228 crore were thrown away. Or that India also threw 447 kt of plastics worth Rs 5,152 crore, as pointed by the report.

The point is that a mass culture of consumption and inadequate attention to waste management and disposal has created an environmental crisis in India and all over the world. As the report said, worldwide, 1,600 tonnes of gold worth a whopping Rs 1.44 lakh crore (18.8 billion euros) was discarded in form of e-waste.

But let us focus on issues closer home.  According to an Assocham report, says the Moneycontrol piece, in India, Mumbai leads e-waste generation with 1,20,000 metric tonnes (MT) and is  followed by Delhi with 98,000 MT e-waste per year. Bengaluru, the IT capital of India is at the third position, generating 92,000 MT of e-waste per year.

And where does all this waste go? Herein lies the real calamity.

When it is not generating e-waste, India is also acting as a passive dumping ground for the e-waste produced in the developed countries. Moneycontrol cites Assocham again to share  that Delhi alone receives around 10,000 metric tonnes of e-waste every day and  not only each year does 3.65 million metric tonnes of e-waste get imported in Delhi alone but 85 percent of waste generated in the developed world lands up here!

Other e-waste dumping sites include Ahmedabad, Chennai, Mumbai etc.

Not surprisingly, the report puts China at the top of  e-waste pile with a production with 7.2 million metric tonnes in 2016.  China is closely followed by the US with 6.3 million metric tonnes. Japan and India, with 2.1 million metric tonnes and 2 million metric tonnes come at the third and fourth position. 

So where do we stand at the recycling e-waste front?

On paper, India has the total installed capacity of recycling about 22 percent of the total e-waste produced as of 2016. However, as per Assocham, less than 2 percent of India's total electronic waste gets recycled. That means India is able to recover only about Rs 373 crore worth of valuables from the e-waste it generates.

We quote, "The dismal state of e-waste recycling can be assessed from the fact that, despite the mounting heaps, India added just 40 registered recycling plants in two years from November 2014 to December 2016. The e-waste recycling capacity addition was just 88,931 metric tonnes in two years, which by all measures can be considered a drop in the ocean.

Incidentally, as per a May 2016 report by the department of electronics and information technology (Deity), accessed by OECD, 90-95 percent of e-waste recycling happens in the informal sector which is highly inefficient. The recovery yield is poor and only 10-20 percent of the precious metals are recovered."

As is the case with waste disposal all over India, despite advertising campaigns to clean India, we still use manpower in the most primitive way to clear sewers and drains.  And even in the case of e-waste, the informal sector employs around 10 lakh people for e-waste recycling but again, they use crude methods in unsafe working conditions. This not only shows a callous disregard for the environment but also for those hired to clean after others.

Google this topic and you will find statistics that approximate electronic waste in India accounting for 40 percent of lead and 70 percent of heavy metals found in landfills. These pollutants, as is obvious, are responsible for groundwater contamination, air pollution and soil acidification. The fact that nearly 95 percent of processing of electronic waste is carried out by the unskilled informal sector, is, as we said again, troublesome on many levels.

 Not enough accountability

Recently, The Hindu reported  how despite new rules that have come into place to safely process this hazardous material, close to 80 percent of e-waste - old laptops and cell phones, cameras and air conditioners, televisions and LED lamps - continues to be broken down, at huge health and environmental cost, by the informal sector.

We quote, "In 2016, the E-Waste (Management) Rules placed responsibility on electronic goods manufacturing companies and bulk consumers to collect and channel e-waste from consumers to authorised re-processing units.

Laws to better manage e-waste have been around since 2011, mandating that only authorised dismantlers and recyclers collect electronic waste. But now, firms are required to set yearly collection targets linked to their production numbers.

The Rules also state that producers of electronic equipment must limit their use of hazardous heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and cadmium. By 2017, the government hoped, manufacturers, who account for the vast majority of e-waste, would get a hang of life under the new Rules and outline targets as well as measures to collect their e-waste."

But well, companies including some of India’s electronic majors seem more intent on generating waste than managing it responsibly.  And as The Hindu reported, 200 companies that manufacture electronic goods — from smart phones to laptops — got served notices in October by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) for not complying with e-waste procurement norms.

Ill-managed processes

The Hindu cites the example of the outskirts of Uttar Pradesh, and several of Delhi’s industrial belts, where rows of shanties manage a messy e-waste recycling network.

The most alarming fact is that many of the workers are children who work with their bare hands, dealing with enormous quantities of toxic metals. "The heavy metals present in e-waste are known to cause neurological and skin diseases, genetic defects and cancer in workers who handle them," the news daily reported.

What also does not help is the GST imposition of a huge 12 percent tax on electronic recyclers.

 Way forward?

The good intentions though are in place. We quote The Hindu, "Under the Swachh Bharat Mission, the environment ministry in association with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has initiated a nationwide capacity building programme on the implementation of six waste management rules, including E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2016.

This awareness programme is being conducted in 68 major cities. The target group comprises officials of municipal bodies, hospitals, resident welfare associations, market committees, local industries, facility operators, bus depots, malls and railway stations. The ministry is also implementing a scheme called the ‘Creation of Management Structure for Hazardous Substances’, which includes an awareness programme about the new Rules and its implementation."

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has also initiated a pilot project ‘Awareness Program on Environmental Hazards of Electronic Waste’ that aims to provide training, tools and films aimed at creating awareness and reducing the impact of e-waste on the environment and health.

But as industry watchers told the paper, unless there is better enforcement and reigning in of the unorganised sector, there can be no real change.

Can consumers drive the change?

According to downtoearth.org, consumers could be the key to better management of e-waste if they learnt to correctly dispose their e-waste, increased reuse and recycling  and adopted sustainable consumer habits.

In India, the lack of an updated inventory of e-waste generated makes it difficult to quantify the e-waste recycled and disposed.

This report says that India is ranked 5th in the world among top e-waste producing countries - USA, China, Japan and Germany.

An ASSOCHAM-KPMG study has also said that Electronic Waste Management in India identified computer equipment account for almost 70 percent of e-waste, followed by telecommunication equipment-phones (12 percent), electrical equipment (8 percent) and medical equipment (7 percent) with the remaining coming from household e-waste.

The focal point here is the consumer behaviour. We quote, "This increase in quantity of e-waste is because of increased consumption but also obsolescence. Users discard old computers, mobiles and other equipment much faster than before. According to a study in May 2017, the volume of waste is growing at an estimated 21 per cent annually.

This report predicts that by 2020, e-waste from old computers in India will increase by 500 per cent; that from discarded mobile phones will be about 18 times higher; from televisions will be 1.5 to 2 times higher; while that from discarded refrigerators will be double; than their respective 2007 levels."

This behaviour acquires a more serious connotation when we learn that only 1.5 per cent of e-waste generated in India gets recycled.  We quote again, "A consumer of an electric or electronic device is not apprised of the end of value chain of the product.

No information is provided along with the product packing about the e-collection centre for the product sold. The responsibility of the consumers is not specified along with the product. The deposit refund scheme (DRS) that aids the recycling of the product is not available in India." Initiatives like Saahas Zero Waste, a startup that converts waste into resources are just a few drops of hope in an ocean of wastefulness.

 How to address India’s e-waste problem?

Ranganathan writes in a piece for Business World, "The planet needs a future where recyclers buy back electronics, manufacturers use second-generation materials and consumers get rid of e-waste responsibly."

And this, he says, is very crucial because by 2020, the number of connected devices in the world will cross the 30 billion mark. He also repeats the rather frightening statistic that the projected global e-waste volume will translate to e-waste of about 6.8 kg per inhabitant.

He however sees hope in the fact that there is a new group of innovators now realizing the ability to convert India’s waste stream into a profit stream. He says, "After all, the value of raw materials in e-waste is estimated to be more than $60 billion. With the right technology, precious materials in e-waste can be refurbished for profit.

The technology to extract value from disposed electronics is giving entrepreneurs the chance to reimagine the supply chain completely. They are now thinking beyond simple scavenging activities. Extracting metals and minerals from e-waste disposed off in landfills is of course inefficient and costly; so, new companies are looking at the e-waste issue from a completely new perspective.

They are providing the world’s biggest technology manufacturers the opportunity to make e-waste management into a feasible revenue source."

But ground realities demand, he says, a very inclusive problem solving where the government must introduce and enforce stricter laws, producers must comply with The E-Waste Management Rules 2016, pollution control boards must audit with transparency and municipalities must work in partnership with PROs (Producer Responsibility Organizations) while collecting e-waste from people and NGOs.

But he too, emphasises most strongly on public awareness and personal initiatives and says, "We need common citizens to realize the impact of e-waste and go about disposing their phones, laptops, and other white goods such as refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners and more, in environmentally friendly ways.

The current rate of e-waste generation in India is 4.56 times more than its e-waste processing capacity. So perhaps the best way to turn this ratio around is by disposing off electronics more responsibly at home and at the workplace.

Illegal dumping and disposal are fueled by people throwing unwanted items into the bin, and this simply stems from ignorance. So why not create synchronized awareness programs that educate people about the impact of e-waste and give them the right channels to discard their e-waste?"

 We reproduce some of the measures he recommends:

* Roadside e-recycling – Get businesses to compete with each other to collect e-waste instead of paying collectors to recycle old devices. Proper ‘electronics’ bins on street corners can motivate people to get rid of their e-waste in a responsible way. There’s no reason why there can’t be an app for e-waste collection too.

* Rebates from manufacturers – Encourage manufacturers to provide discounts and cashbacks in exchange for used devices. Some e-commerce sites do sell refurbished devices in the country, but more needs to be done.  Another solution can be to submit a deposit while purchasing a device and collecting the deposit while handing over the device to a certified recycling company.

* Company driven initiatives – Get companies and enterprises to realize their obligation towards e-waste disposal.  Sustainability teams, CSR teams and HR teams should work in tandem to sensitise and incentivize employees.

What the piece brings to us our notice is that awareness must increase at all levels about e waste and efforts to convert e-trash to cash can go a long way in changing mind sets.

Mobile phones are the most obvious culprits

A recent article in The Print says that India is the second largest smartphone market in the world after China — it has about 650 million total mobile users, as per the telecom analysis firm Counterpoint Research.

"Around 40 per cent mobile users replace their phones in less than a year, according to 2017 survey by e-commerce site Quikr Bazaar. This, experts say, is a major chunk of the over 2 million metric tonnes of electronic waste (or e-waste) India generates annually," the report states.

The piece cites Priti Mahesh of environmental NGO Toxics Link who says that by number or in terms of quantity, mobile phones are the biggest contributors to e-waste. Adding to the problem is the fact that over 15-20 percent of discarded mobiles cannot be recycled.

"These mobiles may have broken glass, crushed plastic and evaporating metallic compounds, and end up as landfill or are tossed into nearby drains and waterways," said Priti.

The trash to cash approach can work broadly here because as the piece points out, Indian e-waste sector is estimated to be worth $3 billion annually, as per the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation.

 And we have come full circle with this story because the piece cites the Roorkee-based outfit, Attero Recycling, according to which, a million recycled smartphones yield approximately 16,000 kg of copper, 350 kg of silver, 34 kg of gold and 15 kg of palladium.

And while these precious metals can be sold for a good price, the problem, as we pointed before, lies with the primitive and unsanitary methods of extracting them that can cause grievous harm to the handlers employed to do the manual work.

What we need in the end is a larger vision to help the planet and a platform to bring producers, consumers, policy makers and recyclers together in seamless synergy so that everyone feels accountable for the well-being of the environment. And it goes without saying that we need to have responsible consumption and waste management patterns at the micro and macro level.