The Hindu 15.07.2009

Making good of e-waste

D.V.L. Padma Priya

A file Photo

Hazardous job: Technicians dismantling electronic waste from obsolete, broken and discarded devices. —

HYDERABAD: Ever thought what happens to our good old computers, televisions, etc. when they are finally discarded? E-waste has become one of the biggest sources for many industries for raw materials like plastic, steel, aluminium and copper. They are used to make various products.

A sample of the usefulness of recycling can be witnessed at Earth Sense Recycle Private Limited, the State’s only authorised recycling unit. Workers in protective gear can be seen stripping bare the electronic items. Each worker is assigned a component- monitor, CPUs, Cathode Ray Tubes, keyboards, mouse, printers, etc. All plastic, copper, aluminium, steel, etc. is segregated and kept in separate piles.

S. John Roberts, Earth Sense CEO, says that after recycling, only 5 to 10 per cent of e-waste actually reaches the landfills. “About 5 per cent of the e-waste comprises printed circuit boards that cannot be recycled in India and while 23 per cent of it is plastic, the rest is mild steel, copper, aluminium and steel,” he points out.

Excellent resource

After segregation, the stockpiles of plastic are shredded into finer pieces, while aluminium, copper and steel parts are collected by the respective industries. The plastic pieces are then converted into pellets and used for making chairs, buckets, mugs and the like and the metal parts are smelted and reused to make aluminium doors, copper wires, steel parts, etc. “How long can one extract metal from ore? E-waste is an excellent resource for metals in a world of depleting resources and means less burden on the environment,” says Mr. Robert.

However, only a small percentage of the useful components from e-waste are obtained from authorised recyclers. Industries continue to depend on the informal sector consisting of ‘kabadiwalas’ and second-hand goods dealers for raw material, he says.

The problem lies in not who is providing the scrap, but the way it is obtained. “The methods adopted by scrap-dealers are hazardous. The technology employed is not just rudimentary but dangerous too,” he says. Cable waste is used to cook food, and in many cases metals are melted in an ordinary stove and the effluents (with high percentages of lead and other metals) is discharged into the sewerage.

“Till the informal sector is mainstreamed into the formal sector, there is very little that authorised recyclers like us can do,” says Mr. Robert.