Govt to set up e-waste disposal centres
MUMBAI MIRROR BUREAU
If you wish to discard an old computer but don’t know how, the Maharashtra government has a solution. The state plans to tie up with private companies which will collect the electronic waste from your doorstep and dispose it at soon-to-be set-up integrated waste disposal centres. Four such centres are planned, two of them in Mumbai Metropolitan Region which covers Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai and Raigad. The state also plans to seek central funds for the project.
Secretary (environment) Valsa Nair Singh confirmed the move and said the scheme would be implemented on the public private partnership model between the state, local civic bodies and private companies. “The proposal is at a preliminary stage,” she said. E-waste consists of toxic metals and materials like lead or mercury, but in the absence of scientific methods, it is often improperly handled by ragpickers or dumped as general waste in dumping grounds in cities.
Although the central government has formulated Hazardous Waste Management Rules in 2000, facilities have not been set up for disposal or recycling. Mumbai tops all the cities in generating the maximum quantity of e-waste in country. According to Maharashtra Pollution Control Board study of 2007, total e waste generation in Maharashtra is 20,270.6 tonnes of e-waste of which Mumbai generated 11,017.06 tons. “Currently we are looking for sites measuring about 3-4 acres for these waste disposal centres,” Singh stated.
Children watch, forlorn, as BMC demolishes their homes on Wednesday morning. The civic body demolished around 1,000 hutments that had been built at Kannamawar Nagar, Vikhroli (East) after destroying 3 acres of mangroves. The hutments had come up on Collectors land post 2000. The demolition was done under the supervision of Milind Shambharkar, deputy ,municipal commissioner (removal of encroachments)