Taste for waste

AMRINDER SINGH, 57, is a government employee living in south Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar. His neighbours say he has a big heart—he donates generously for religious functions and other community services in his locality. His domestic help, too, is all praise for him as he helps her with money whenever she is in need. But when it comes to selling the waste in his house, Singh forgets his generous nature and makes every penny count.

On the first Sunday of every month, he haggles with the raddiwala (waste dealer) who goes to his house to collect newspapers. And he does so in a voice loud enough for his neighbours to hear, as if to deter them from selling their waste to the raddiwala who could be cheating them. Nothing irks Singh more than getting less from a waste collector, even if it is a paltry sum of Rs 2. To ease his troubles, he went to Central market to buy himself a weighing scale, spending more than what he could have earned by selling waste.

One Sunday, Singh saw his new tenants selling their waste paper to uniformed men at their doorstep. They had an electronic weighing scale and provided the tenants with a receipt along with the money. There was no haggling and, for the first time, Singh realised that selling waste could be smooth and hassle-free.

A click away

In the past two years, a number of waste collection centres have come up in the country. In Delhi, Raddi Express is the most active. Its website claims that it is the city’s “first professional waste paper pickup service”. At http://www.raddiexpress.com, one can either register and book an appointment with the waste collectors online or make a call to invite them home. The telecallers ask for a suitable date and time. The customer receives a confirmation call half an hour before the waste collectors reach their house. While unorganised waste collectors in the city offer anywhere between Rs 10-Rs 12 per kg for newspapers, cardboard and waste paper, Raddi Express offers Rs 11 per kg. Customers who have pamphlets distributed with newspapers get an extra 50 paise/kg. The only condition is that a customer should have a minimum of 10 kg waste paper. Used bottles or metal scraps are not collected.

Singh is one of the happy beneficiaries of this service. In the first week of every month, he pesters his son to book an appointment with the raddiwala at raddiexpress.com. Today, he sells his waste paper at best rates, without haggling.

Raddi Express is part of India Recypa Pvt. Ltd., a joint venture waste paper trading company, with its office in Nehru Place. India Recypa had tie-ups with recycling plants in the country. But it began to face problems of sourcing waste material. It then decided to enter the market by collecting waste directly from homes and offices. The company started raddiexpress.com, which became operational in January this year. At present, its “fleet on street” is 20-persons strong.

Ajay Sharma, Raddi Express’ general manager, says that the motive is to make people aware of the usefulness of recycling. This, he adds, will bring down the paper industry’s dependence on the import of raw material.

According to Indian Agro & Recycled Paper Mills Association, India produces 12-15 million tonnes of waste paper every year, out of which only 26 per cent is recycled. This is insignificant compared to what is recycled by Germany (80 per cent), Sweden (69 per cent), Japan (60 per cent) and the US (49 per cent).

 thekabadiwala.com in Bhopal has been in the market for over a year and gets 20-30 orders every day

Sharma says the company wants to change the profile of waste collection business in India. “We are trying to create awareness among the people. But there are problems. Some resident welfare associations do not support us. When our collectors go there, the security guards hesitate to let them in and even the local raddiwala threatens them. The people in the area have to come forward and support us,” he says. Raddi Express has six collection vans stationed in different parts of Delhi and two warehouses to store the waste collected each day. When there is enough waste for a truckload, it is sent to one of the 27 paper mills with which India Recypa has tie-up. There is no dealer or middleman involved. The waste collectors directly sell their waste to the recycler, which is why the company can afford a higher profit margin.

Sanjeev Sharma, assistant manager of Raddi Express, says they get close to 100 calls a day. “We try to ensure that the calls are catered to the very same day,” he adds. A pickup van collects between 400 kg and 500 kg of waste paper per day.

Apart from providing credibility to the waste collector and making the transaction easy for the customer, the company has innovative ideas to promote its work.

One of these is the barter system. Instead of money, customers can choose products such as A4-size paper, diaries, registers, copies and spiral notepads.

Flourishing business

Raddi Express is not the only service to have gone online. Raddi Bazaar, another online portal, caters to people in Dwarka, National Capital Region, while Raddiwala has started in Mumbai. Kabadi King in Jaipur and The Kabadiwala in Bhopal have been in the market for more than a year now and boast a list of dedicated customers who supply them waste paper every month.

Anurag Asati, co-founder of thekabadiwala.com, says that the idea struck him while he was looking for a raddiwala to sell waste. “I wondered: what if there is a system where people could just call or register online and waste collectors would visit their house at a convenient time?” Asati has a team of 20-25 people. He says that he started his company with an investment of Rs 20,000 with the help of friends. Over the years, with an increase in the number of customers, the profits have increased. Now, the company gets between 20 and 30 orders every day.

Livelihood threat

Mohammed Taufiq, a waste dealer in Lajpat Nagar, does not know about the online system that could threaten his business. When asked how he would survive in the market, he said, “Jab hoga dekha jayega, abhi se soch ke kya faida? (Will see when it happens, why should I start worrying now?)” Others have devised ways to take on the challenge. “I have printed visiting cards with my phone number and address. I can come whenever people want me to. If they have a problem with the weighing scale I use, they can use their own,” says Anwar, a waste collector in Lajpat Nagar. “It is just that the computer raddiwalas look good with their clean clothes and uniform. This is just a craze,” he adds.

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/taste-for-waste-46048

Wasted wealth

The compost plant at Bhalswa is located at one of Delhi’s oldest landfills (Photographs: Soumik Mukherjee)

The sacks of compost stacked neatly at the entrance of the municipal compost plant in Bhalswa, on the outskirts of north Delhi, give the picture of a flourishing compost plant. Senior officials at the facility, run by Excel Industries Private Limited, say it turns a huge amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) to wealth every day.

But the picture contrasts reality. The sacks are accumulated not because they are ready to be transported to farms and gardens, but because they have no takers. “It is of very poor quality,” says Govind Singh, who used to work as a gardener in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). “I was given the compost for the MCD parks, but it was no good,” he says.

It is laden with heavy metals, toxins and glass because MSW is not segregated, says Asit Nema of Delhi-based non-profit Foundation for Greentech Environmental Systems. MCD transports all waste to compost plants in the same truck. “So, even if waste is segregated at source, it gets mixed in trucks,” he says.

What’s more, the sacks are left in the open. The weather-beaten sacks get torn over a period of time and rains wash away nutrients present in the compost.

How it’s made

The most common method of composting in the country is windrow—decomposing biodegradable waste in long rows. “We have a huge machine which has five metallic rows in concentric circles,” says Subhash Kumar, in-charge of the plant. MSW is placed on the farthest row, sprayed with microbial liquid and left in 70°-80° C temperature for a week. The waste is then turned by heavy machines and shifted to the inner circle. The procedure is repeated five times, and each time the waste is turned, he says.

After five weeks of anaerobic decomposition, the waste is sifted through a filter. A 40 mm screen removes plastic, iron and glass, which is sent to the landfill. The refined waste is then passed through a 20 mm screen at 40°-45° C and then through a 4 mm screen to get the final compost. This is packed in sacks and kept in temperature between 15° C and 20° C before being handed over to the distributor, he says.

Windrows composting works well when large quantities of waste have to be handled. The Supreme Court’s committee for solid waste management in the country endorses windrows as the method for composting in the country.

So why does the compost have few takers? The problems lie in the temperature in which compost is prepared and its turning process. Turning improves its porosity and oxygen content, removes moisture and evenly distributes its cooler and hotter portions. “Most plants have a fleet of turners but there is no guarantee that waste will be turned five times at regular intervals. All parts of the waste may not be subjected to the right temperature. Thus, the desirable level of pathogen and weed seed destruction may not be achieved,” says Nema.

Machines require considerable amount of fuel. This apart, when the machines operate, the level of wear and tear is high. Consequently, they need repair work, which translates to high operating cost. Companies cut cost by subtracting essential processes. Good quality compost should be prepared only in 60°C-70°C, states the Supreme Court’s inter-ministerial task force on nutrient management using city compost. The moisture content should be maintained between 40 and 60 per cent. A minimum of 20 per cent moisture content is essential to keep the beneficial microbes alive, it states.

“If these factors are changed, like at the Bhalswa plant, the quality of compost gets affected,” says Om Rupela, former principal scientist at the International Crop Research Institute of Semi-Arid Tropics in Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh. “An organic farmer should never use city compost because it is laden with heavy metals,” he says.

Poor performers

The plant at Bhalswa was set up in 1989. It started functioning in 1993 at one of Delhi’s oldest landfills, spread across 21.06 hectares. About 2,200 tonnes of MSW from Civil Lines, Karol Bagh, Rohini and Najafgarh is dumped here every day. The plant has the capacity to produce 500 tonnes of compost per day. But it does not produce more than 350 tonnes, says Sanjeev Agrawal, scientist at CPCB. The final production is only about 24 per cent of the total waste received.

“The output is low in almost all the facilities because firms do not segregate MSW. Mixed waste is allowed to decompose in unregulated or uncontrolled way. Sorting is done only in the second phase,” says Agrawal.

ILFS Eco Smart has been operating a municipal compost plant in Okhla since 2008. Against its installed capacity of 200 tonnes per day, it produces 150 tonnes compost per day.

The facility at Narela-Bawana, operated by Integrated MSW Management-Compost plant and Sanitary Land Fill Site, is also reported to be operating at 1,276 tonnes per day against its installed capacity of 1,500 tonnes per day. Between September and December, 2012, the company received 1,55,712 tonnes of waste.

Flouting rules

Most plants do not adhere to the Fertiliser (Control) Order, 1985 (FCO). A study was conducted in 2011 by the Indian Institute of Soil Science, Bhopal, to investigate physico-chemical properties, fertilising potential and heavy metal polluting potential of MSW compost in 29 cities. It found organic matter,nitrogen and phosphorus contents in the compost low and heavy metal content high. None of the samples were within the FCO limits (see ‘The rules say’). Compost of only two cities—Suryapet and Vijayawada—passed the statutory guidelines of European countries. In these two Andhra Pradesh cities MSW is segregated at source. According to a task force report in 2009, Kanpur’s compost quality was found to be of highly superior quality because of segregated waste.

But the defaulting plants receive pats on the back for churning out compost. The Okhla composting plant received Rs 25 lakh as carbon credits from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change for processing 2 lakh tonnes of MSW into compost through aerobic composting technology.

The companies take money from the municipality to run the compost plants and get incentives from the government, apart from enviroment agencies for converting MSW to zero waste. “Where’s the need for quality control and sell compost?” asks a junior employee at the Bhalswa plant.

Sandeep Mishra, member secretary of Dehi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), which encourages composting in hotels, says quality of compost is not DPCC’s concern. It is only concerned with the management of waste.

As per FCO, a government-appointed inspector takes a compost sample from the market and gets it analysed at the Central Fertiliser Quality Control and Training Institute at Faridabad, or regional fertiliser control labs in Mumbai, Chennai or Kolkata, or in any laboratory notified by the government. But firms usually get their product tested at private labs.

Taufik Ahmad, an MCD official, says the company at Bhalswa sends compost samples to Shriram Institute for Industrial Research every six months. However, the company officials are not ready to divulge the results. L Krishnan, CEO of ILFS Eco Smart, says the company tests its samples at its own laboratory.

Incentivise compost

“There is heavy subsidy on chemical fertilisers. Incentives should also be offered on purchase of MSW compost to farmers,” says Rupela.

“There is a rule to sell a bag of MSW compost with two-three bags of urea. But what can we do if farmers do not want it?” says Mohan Singh of a fertiliser distributing company at north Delhi. A farmer would spend Rs 2 to buy another bag of fertiliser rather than spend Rs 3 on a bag of compost, he says.

When the government does not promote use of compost, how can one expect farmers to develop faith in it? asks Krishnan. “Compost has fewer buyers not because of the poor quality but because of the absence of subsidy,” says Krishnan.

“Steps have been initiated to give incentives or subsidies on MSW compost,” says Krishna Chandra, additional commissioner, department of agriculture. But these are still at the planning stage, he says. The cost of composting can come down if waste is segregated at source, says Almitra H Patel, member of Supreme Court Committee for Solid Waste Management.

“If it can be brought down from Rs 2,500 per tonne to even Rs 1,500 per tonne, it would become affordable for the farmers and the facilities could run in no loss and marginal profit,” she says.

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/wasted-wealth-41917

Out of the box

Mita Gupta of Delhi visits a retail shop, goes to the personal care section, looks for the familiar toothpaste, picks it up, brings it home, takes the tube out and throws the packet into a bin. She does not even glance at the elaborate information printed on the packet. And Gupta is not the only one to do so. According to the International Foundation for Research and Development, a UAE-based non-profit, 55 per cent of the Indian population—about 682 million people—uses toothpaste. Given that Gupta uses 10 tubes of 80g toothpaste a year and that each packet she discards weighs 3g, the country must be generating 20,460 tonnes of paper and cellophane waste a year by using toothpaste. In the absence of strict recycling rules, more often than not these packets are found strewn around, polluting the environment.

The new toothpaste packaging design is user-friendly and can minimise waste and manufacturing costs

According to the Centre for Environment and Development, a Bhubaneswar-based non-profit, paper and cardboard form the second biggest component of domestic waste after organic waste, and contribute to about 13 per cent of the total domestic solid waste.

So, why does one need this extra packaging for a toothpaste tube or for various such personal care products, for that matter? If toothpaste alone can generate 20,460 tonnes of waste, imagine the quantum of waste generated from the ubiquitous cold creams, hair oil, shampoos, pain balms and several such commodities that come with extra packets.

N C Saha, director of the Indian Institute of Packaging and member of World Packaging Organisation, says manufacturers claim that outer packaging or double packaging helps stock the product on shelf and in transportation. It also displays the brand name more prominently than the tube or bottle. “No matter how sustainable manufacturers claim to be, they would hesitate bringing even minute changes in packaging fearing that their competitors will have an upper hand,” says Saha, adding that the change has to come from consumers. The manufacturers would be compelled to take heed if the consumers put their foot down and say they do not want this extra packaging.

PEOPLE’S CHOICE
TAVLEEN KAUR I have thought about it a number of times but am not sure if we have a choice not to buy the box
SUDHIR KUMAR Cheeze hain to parda bhi to hona chahiye! (All things should be draped)
JYOTI PANDEY Will we get a discount on the product for returning the box?
JAGJEET SINGH The Vyapar Mandals should take this up with manufacturers. At least this is how each one can contribute in saving the environment
ARUN ANEJA We had some awareness programmes about this at school or college. But I forgot what it was

Take the example of Kalmar in Sweden. The coastal city’s 35,000 people decided to do away with unnecessary packaging. The country has strict waste segregation laws, which make its citizens pay for the waste they generate. With the help of the city municipality, the people managed to convince manufacturers that they do not want extra boxes on commodities that could have other forms of seal. Since then, several companies have introduced products in shrink-packs in Kalmar.

Kapil Dua of Kalkaji Vyapar Mandal in New Delhi says several cosmetic brands like Maybelline and L’Oréal have done away with boxes and introduced shrink-pack. But some consumers look more satisfied if the product comes in an outer box. It assures them that it is sealed, Dua says. Kalkaji Vyapar Mandal has 200 shops under its umbrella. However, a 2011 survey by Nielsen, a global consumer information and market measurement company, shows Indian consumers are getting increasingly conscious of the benefits of environment-friendly and sustainable practices. India was among the top three countries from the Asia Pacific region that showed affinity towards eco-friendly products in the Global Online Environment and Sustainability Survey. It had over 25,000 respondents from 51 countries.

The trend is in line with global numbers, where 83 per cent believe that manufacturers using recycled packaging and producing energy-efficient products and appliances have a positive impact on the environment. However, when compared with firms in the US and Europe, companies in Indian are yet to realise their full potential, states the survey report. Another 2011 study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) shows several Indian firms are opting for eco-friendly packaging as consumers mature and shift preferences to pro-environment alternatives. The report says eco-friendly packaging sector is growing at 25 per cent a year, while growth rate of overall packaging industry is 20 per cent.

Companies like Blue Dart, Dell and GUCCI have already incorporated recycled packaging in their Indian operations. Hindustan Unilever and Colgate Palmolive, which roll out majority of personal care products, have also set their sustainable targets. Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan India 2011 states the firm would reduce weight of the packaging by a third by using light weight material, optimising structural and material design, developing concentrated versions of products and eliminating unnecessary packaging by 2020. They also claim to have helped significantly reduce overall plastic and paperboard consumption in India. Colgate-Palmolive also targets improving its packaging and waste generation.

Cradle to grave lifecycle

A Balasubramaniam, an alumni of the National Institute of Design and owner of January Design, a design consultancy in Gurgaon, says there is a lot of scope for sustainable design when it comes to packaging. But manufacturers do not take the initiative. For instance, it took a court order for pan masala manufacturers to shift from plastic wrapper to paper packets. But a lot of cellophane wrappers from soaps, condoms and shampoos still find their way into our domestic sewerage systems, choking everything on the way. “Compare this with the elegant baskets that Japanese pack their stuff in and you would understand how design could beautifully contribute in saving the environment,” says Balasubramaniam. “We need to get there, and sooner the better. Designers must engage their clients in the whole designing process.

Systemic thinking needs to be applied to packaging design assignments. A strong lobby for keeping the whole process sustainable needs to be in place,” he adds. Sang Min Yu and Wong Sang Lee of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in the UK, have come up with unique toothpaste packaging design that eliminates the hard-to-squeeze dead space, minimises toothpaste residue left inside the container and reduces two packagings to one.

Finally, a user-friendly design, so that people easily adopt it. It means waste and manufacturing price can finally be reduced. ISO14040 gives us the following definition for ‘life cycle’: “Consecutive and interlinked stages of a product system, from raw material acquisition or generation from natural resources to final disposal.”… in other words, cradle-to-grave. One wonders what would happen if Mita Gupta, and a hundred others, refuse to buy the extra box on the toothpaste while paying at the cash counter.

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/coverage/out-of-the-box-41778

End-of-life neglect

Safe recycling of e-waste remains a pipe dream despite government rules

India’s e-waste from old computers will jump 500 per cent by 2020

Much hope was pinned on the e-waste management rules when the Union environment ministry introduced them in May last year. The rules placed India on a par with a select few developing countries that have laws in place to safely handle and dispose of the growing volume of electronic waste. But 10 months on, the effort seems to have turned into a damp squib.

So far the ministry has no data on how much e-waste the country generates, let alone any information on how many manufacturers or importers of computers, mobile phones and other electronic items are ensuring proper disposal of their products or recycling of the end-of-life products.

According to Manufacturers’ Association of Information Technology, India generates 400,000 tonnes of e-waste every year. Industry experts have been citing this figure for the past three years (see ‘IT’s underbelly’, Down To Earth, May 16-31, 2010). However, only 19,000 tonnes of this e-waste is recycled. An additional 50,000 tonnes of e-waste is illegally imported into the country. Some 95 per cent of this e-waste is dismantled manually by scrap dealers. The dismantling methods they use are extremely harmful to the environment and human health, state studies by several environmental agencies, including the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). They either immerse printed circuit boards and electronic parts into chemical solutions or burn them to obtain metal extracts. These processes release toxic gases. Certain electronic components contain potential carcinogenic substances such as lead and cadmium.

The rules for the first time put the onus of reducing and recycling these e-wastes on manufacturers and importers of electronic items. They made them legally responsible for making people aware of these hazardous components and inform consumers about proper disposal system so that they do not mix e-waste with domestic waste. The industry was also entrusted with the responsibility of setting up e-waste collection centres and introducing “take back” systems as extended producers responsibility (EPR).

The ministry gave the producers of electrical and electronic equipment a breathing period of one year to enable them to set up collection centres for electronic waste and implement the take-back system.

“But little has been done despite this grace period,” says Ravi Agarwal of Toxics Link, a Delhi-based non-profit. “There have been implementation slippages since the rules came into force.”

Anand Kumar, senior environmental engineer with the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), says the kind of enthusiasm the ministry was expecting from the producers following introduction of the rules is missing. Some producers are concerned and have put an e-waste collection system in place. State pollution control boards are making the rest aware about the system through workshops. Kumar says he still receives online enquiries from several companies about the collection system.

Laxmi Raghupathy, a technical specialist on e-waste and former director with MoEF, says the rules entrust the entire responsibility of end-of-life management on the producer through EPR, but the mechanism is not clear. And therein lies the problem.

Some manufacturers have put in place a collection system but it is not fully operational due to lack of take-back targets of e-waste. “Unlike countries in Europe where companies are provided e-waste related targets, there is no such mechanism in the Indian rules. Unless there are clear targets how can the performance of the companies be measured?” asks Rohan Gupta, chief operating officer, Attero, an electronics recycling company in Roorkee.

Raghupathy says informal e-waste collection centres pose the biggest challenge for such formal collection system. They offer better prices for used electronic goods compared to the formal sector. Though the number of formal recyclers has been increasing at a rapid pace—from a single firm in 2005 to 90 now—the total recycling capacity of these authorised facilities is way less than the e-waste generated. Worse, even the established facilities are not getting volumes of electronic waste up to their full capacity. For instance, Attero is operating at only 20 per cent of its capacity. The situation is not much different for smaller recyclers.

There are only 19 authorised e-waste recyclers in Karnataka to cater to the needs of more than 450 electronic goods manufacturing industries. Most of these recyclers are in Bengaluru that generates bulk of the e-waste. Yet the amount of e-waste these recycling companies receive is very little. The recyclers had received only 300 tonnes of e-waste last year, which was much less than the amount generated, say state pollution control board officials.

It seems the ministry has not learnt from the Lead Acid Battery Rules of 2002. The rules mandate recycling of lead acid batteries through EPR of manufacturers alone, but did not involve scrap dealers who divert them to informal smelters.

The industry feels imposing responsibility only on the producers is not the solution to the e-waste problem. For instance, even if bulk consumers, such as software companies, use thousands of electronic equipment, they are not accountable for recycling and disposal of e-waste. All they have to ensure is that the e-waste is taken back by suppliers. Besides, Mahesh Bhalla, executive director of Dell India, says availability of appropriate technology is essential for ensuring the success of the e-waste management rules. “The optimum use of technology can go a long way in ensuring not just environment-friendly products, but also end-to-end processes in the manner in which an organisation conducts its business operations like e-waste recycling,” he adds.

Then there is no system for certifying or declaring the end-of-life of a product, nor any legal format for issuing destruction certificate for an electronic item. Every recycler gives a different certificate of destruction to the client. This helps the second hand market for electronic items flourish, even though it is illegal to refurbish electronic items under the rules.

To get the upper hand over e-waste management, CPCB plans to begin a nation-wide survey along with state pollution control boards. The exercise would help identify the challenges faced by the government as well as private companies in managing e-waste. The survey would also determine the type of waste, its source, destination and aspects related to its treatment and recycling. Its earlier survey, done in 2005, was confined to top 10 cities in the country. This time, it aims to reach smaller cities.

Kumar says the board will start the survey in a month or two. As of now, state pollution control boards are trying to put in place an inventory of manufacturers and suppliers of electronic items and e-waste recycling companies in the country. Only Jammu and Kashmir has completed the inventory. Andhra Pradesh has done it for only three districts. Himachal Pradesh has submitted a draft report, while Maharashtra and Karnataka, two of the states that generate most of the e-waste, are yet to begin the work. Kumar hopes CPCB will be able to compile the data soon and upload it on its website by June.

Any delay in the effort could mean manufacturers and consumers will improperly dump e-wastes, contaminating the environment. According to a UN report, India’s e-waste from old computers alone will jump 500 per cent by 2020, compared to 2007. This warrants attention.

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/end-life-neglect

Wasted e-waste

Electronic waste is a mine of precious metals, but poor regulations simplify its squandering away

The old, dilapidated mobile phone you replaced with a snazzy, up-to-date version was disposed of properly at the company’s collection centre. You think it has been discarded in an environment friendly way. But often that does not happen. Worse, it can contribute to the losses the country makes on account of electronic waste, or e-waste.

Mobile phones have precious metals such as gold, silver and palladium; special metals such as cobalt, indium and antimony; and metals such as copper and tin. These are present in individual phones in traces, but one tonne of mobile phones has as much as 340 grams of gold, 3.5 kilograms of silver, 140 grams of palladium and 130 kilograms of copper, states a 2009 report on e-waste by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The country produces 65,000 tonnes of e-waste from mobile phones in a year. But there are very few recycling units in India to recover these, so scrap dealers extract as much as they can and export the rest. The country thus loses 70 per cent of recoverable precious metals present in electronic junk, says Ashish Chaturvedi, senior technical adviser to Indo-German Environment Partnership.

On losing ground

Computers, mobile phones and other electronic products use a staggering 320 tonnes of gold and more than 7,500 tonnes of silver annually world wide. Often, these are 40 to 50 times richer than their ores, states a report by Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeGI), a collaboration of members from major information and communication technology companies across the worldand United Nations University. One tonne of scrap from discarded computers contains more gold than can be produced from 17 tonnes of gold ore. A mobile phone contains five to 10 times more gold than gold ore.

What’s more, 17 precious and semi-precious metals can be extracted from e-waste, says Anand Kumar, senior environmental engineer with the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). But exporters get value for only four elements—gold, silver, copper and palladium. Worse, their value is much more if extracted in the country.

India generates 350,000 tonnes of e-waste every year. Another 50,000 tonnes are imported for dismantling. The process is cheap in India as it involves manual labour. Dismantlers, however, extract only a small amount. They export parts such as printed circuit boards, which are rich in precious metals, to countries which claim to have environmentally sound technology.

Umicore Precious Metals Refining in Belgium, SIMS Recycling Solution in Singapore, Boliden at Sweden, Xstrata in Canada and DOWA in Japan possess the technical knowhow of recycling e-waste. These companies, which have been set up with huge amounts of investment, are predominantly mining companies which also extract precious metals for e-waste recyclers.

India loses 50 per cent of the gold during crude dismantling, according to GeSI and Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP), an international initiative that finds solutions to e-waste management problem. According to Chaturvedi, 95 per cent of the country’s e-waste is recycled by scrap dealers, but they extract not more than 15 per cent of the precious metals. India makes huge losses considering the country’s projected growth for e-waste generation is 34 per cent every year, according to reports by non-profit Toxics Link. Mumbai, the highest e-waste producing city in the country, throws away 19,000 tonnes of e-waste in a year. Business trends show that by 2020, e-waste from mobile phones will be an astounding 18 times the current level. Computer waste will rise by 500 per cent.

But E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2011 that became effective last year is inadequate and does not say much on export and import of e-waste. Result: precious metals easily go out of the country while developed nations dump their e-waste in the country often in the name of charity.

Lucrative business

Business can be quite profitable for companies that have up-to-date technology. Picture this: A e-waste contains five to 10 times more gold than gold ore. Multiply this with 350,000 tonnes of waste the country generates annually. The number is pretty lucrative. According to a study by Toxics Link, five tonnes of e-waste, which would come from 183 old models of discarded computers, can give Rs 178,308 as profit.

The math is simple: taking a conservative estimate, the total value of recoverable metals from 183 computers would be Rs 288,108. Logistics for collection of the waste would be about Rs 600. When multiplied with the 183 computers, the cost would come to Rs 109,800. This means the recycler can get a good Rs 178,308 as profit.

Technologically starved

The recycling methods that scrap dealers use are extremely harmful to environmental and human health, state studies by environmental agencies, including CPCB. They either immerse printed circuit boards and electronic parts into chemical solutions or burn them to obtain metal extracts. These two processes release toxic gases. Besides harming the environment it is an occupational hazard.

The biggest e-waste recycling unit in the country, Roorkee-based Attero Recycling, has the capacity to treat 12,000 tonnes of e-waste in a year. The company claims it uses an environmentally sound technology, but technical experts differ. There are a few more such as Mumbai-based Eco Recycling Limited and Bengaluru-based E-Parisaraa Private Ltd which have capacities of 7,200 tonnes per annum and 1,800 tonnes per annum respectively. But they are still upgrading their technology.

Recycling units in the country do not get enough e-waste because they do not pay as much for the junk as scrap dealers do. Companies are scared of making a large-scale investment in a state-of-the-art e-waste management facility in India, says owner of a dismantling unit in Kolkata on the condition of anonymity. “If I invest in setting up a proper recycling unit, there is no surety that it will get the required amount of e-waste,” he says.

Many firms have set up collection centres after the E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2011 extended the responsibility of e-waste management to the producers. Many firms sell the collected junk to the unorganised sector at e-waste hot spots Chandni Chowk and Central Avenue in Kolkata, he says. Company officials are not ready to admit this. Spokesperson of electronics giant Lenovo claims the multinational has recycled more than 46,000 tonnes of e-waste returned by customers since May 2005.

Where is government support?

When E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2011 came into effect, many collectors, dismantlers and recyclers started approaching state pollution control boards to get themselves registered. According to the rules, registered collectors are supposed to handover e-waste to registered dismantlers or recyclers. They will recycle e-waste using environmentally sound technology and export the rest to countries with better e-waste treatment facilities.

CPCB officials claim they are lenient on registering dismantlers and recyclers as it would help scrutinise the vast amount of e-waste that the unorganised sector collects. However, data collected from various state pollution control boards reveals that till date only about 100 registrations have been made.

According to Alexis Vandendaelen of Umicore Precious Metals Refining, e-waste should be seen as opportunity rather than burden. “The phrase waste management should be replaced with resource management,” he says. The ideal way of resource management would be to first make local pre-processing efficient, followed by maximum recovery of materials and proper treatment of residual waste in countries with the best technologies for the job, with proceeds shared fairly and equitably, he says.

Laxmi Raghupathy, technical specialist on e-waste and former director, environment ministry, however, says the need is to reach out to people in the informal sector because most people engaged in recycling and dismantling belong to this sector. Also, e-waste rules should be in accordance with Restriction of Hazardous Substances, the international norms issued by the EU. At present, e-waste rules and the international norms specify different amounts of metals present in electronic products.

Raghupathy suggests that initially guidelines should be introduced for better management. After a period of time and experience, amendments should be made to sort out the problems.

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/wasted-e-waste