Deccan Chronicle 03.11.2009
New recyclers for e-waste
Bengaluru, Nov. 2: The city is set to get six new e-waste recyclers as the Pollution Control Board and the Environment, Ecology and Forest secretariat move to address the growing concern over electronic waste in the country’s IT capital.
The city generates 90 per cent of the total e-waste of the state annually, estimated at 11,000 tonnes. “We want to minimise the amount that remains unprocessed and gets into nature, either into the ground or into water”, says a senior official of the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB), “The Board has approved six recyclers to collect and pool e-waste at designated places to be dismantled for recycle and reuse”.
But the problem in dealing with e-waste lies at the level of the citizen, household and institutions. The state generates some 2,200-3,000 tonnes of hazardous waste a day, but that figure includes solid, medical, industrial and electronic. Most of it is disposed of unsegregated. There’s little awareness among citizens on the need to segregate waste.
Neither do they know that much of the waste they throw out gets into the hands of unorganised, unauthorised recyclers, and worse still that downstream, a lot of hazardous waste, such as heavy metals, gets into the water bodies in and around the city. Several studies conducted by researchers at IISc and other institutions have confirmed that hazardous industrial and e-waste is indeed finding way into the city’s lakes. “Heavy metals from e-waste are seeping through into the ground water. It is a health hazard that we will have to reckon with someday,” said one expert.
Kanwal Pal, secretary for Environment, Ecology and Forest says his department is now making an effort to raise awareness and even make it easy for people and institutions to dispose e-waste separately.
“We are taking up the issue at the next board meeting with the urban secretary. We will put up e-waste collection bins in large commercial areas to collect segregated e-waste,” Pal said.
Also, nearly 90 per cent of it has been going into the unorganised sector for dismantling. We need to see that they go into safe hands, so we need more authorised recyclers”, Pal said. The bins are expected to be seen in shopping malls, club houses and residential complexes. NGOs and tech companies have also started their own e-waste collection programmes. But there is little effort to educate Bengalureans on how to easily segregate and dispose household waste on a daily basis. Will the authorities address waste at the point of origin, please?
