e-waste
Global Social Responsibility
B K Soni, Managing Director, Infotrek Syscom Limited, Bombay, India
Waste of all sort put together is a major cause of Global Warming and electronic waste (e-waste) is one of the biggest contributor. It is because of electronic revolution the Globe has become a Village. Therefore, we must look at the problem of e-waste in that perception. Political boundaries of respective countries should not be the only criteria of dealing with such grave problem. I am not advocating ignoring respective political boundaries, but there should be a practical global solution to the issue.
Presently, Basel convention as well as local legislations and guidelines suggest dealing with such e-waste locally or within the boundaries of the respective Countries, barring specific permissions for cross border deals.
It may be interesting to note that cross border transactions of new electronic equipments are practically permitted across the Globe but when it comes the question of trading or transporting of used/end of life equipments from one to the other country it is being restricted mainly on the ground of hazardous nature. It may again be interesting to note that by virtue of passage of time and utilization, electronic equipments does not become hazardous at the end of their lives.
It has been noticed that certain countries are unable to handle the volumes of e-waste generated at their end and because of that lot of e-waste goes in land fill. Primarily there are two reasons of that one, cost of treatment at their end which is higher then the value realized on sale of such commodities and secondly administrative controls of that land.
Since commodity prices are subject to Global trend and therefore increased handling and/or processing costs may make it unviable for consumption or trade. Therefore, in the best interest of keeping a check on the prices of commodities, it is suggested that recycling of e-waste should be done at the places where cost of recycling is lower; probably developing nations may shoulder this responsibility and deliver the secondary source of natural resources back to the society and industry.
It is also worth noting that e-waste is mainly (almost entirely) consisting of those ingredients which are of non bio-degradable in nature and hence they do not mix with soil and therefore they need an attentive treatment before they spoil our environment further. Nature might take very long to bring these commodities back in to their elementary form and by then we would have spoiled our ecological balance to a great level and hence need a greater attention.
Broadly, it has been noticed that in the developed nations there is a tremendous generation of e-waste because of their affordability and requirement while at the end of developing nations there are resources to deal with such waste at lower the costs and hence a proper combination of these complimentary elements should be developed with a specific objective of recycling by the proper facilities but with a check on unauthorized dumping in any form. This will not only save our environment, ecology and health of all the livings but will also protect local manufacturers, traders and over & above that keep the commodity prices under check globally.
At the same time, at local level there is a need of clear direction from the administration for the generators of the e-waste and recyclers also. Presently, many a generators are selling their e-waste to scrap dealers and they in turn break them to separate different commodities in their proprietary style which harms them severally, but for a few hundred bucks? As per an estimate as many as 10,000 families are associated with this trade in India, mainly male members in the family goes door to door to collect e-waste and bring at certain point to break open and separate commodities, with the help of heavy tools, sharp objects, acid etc., whatever does not make commercial sense to them they throw in land and water fill, in turn this affects every life.
Presently, India generates close to 500,000 tons of e-waste per annum, generation is bound to go up gradually and might cross a million ton in next 2 to 3 years. We should not be worried of e-waste generation since it is going to go up with the economic progress and requirements, what we really need to bother is the methodology of handling e-waste, protecting health of the workers and other stakeholders, environment, & ecological balance and commodities.
The biggest problem is, the way it is being dealt with presently is very harmful to the lives of the stakeholders and for the people residing in the neighboring areas. Use of acid, land & water fill of the waste, incineration process leads to generation of carbon dio oxide and other harmful gases.
Since the same can better be done in an environment friendly manner and therefore it is requested to the Government to promote such initiatives by offering certain incentives to this industry like infrastructure status, tax rebates, concessional loan, free land, higher depreciation, carbon credit etc. to the entities having required know how and infrastructure to deal with the same.
In our opinion, we need to work fast on two fronts one to streamline the local business that includes collection, logistics, recycling process, authorization & administration of processing facilities and second attract international business and make India as a global hub of recycling of e-waste and for that a liberal policy is requested from the administration of allowing import with the only objective to recycle in India and that too by the designated facilities.
We, at Infotrek Syscom Limited, are completely committed to work for this cause and have chalked a National level plan to establish ourselves a leading player in this space. Infotrek is working on a business plan of forward integration of reutilizing almost all the commodities recovered from the e-waste barring precious metals like copper, silver, gold, palladium etc.
Finally, we appeal to all the users of electrical & electronic equipments (WEEE) not to discarded e-waste to the unorganized facilities until the administrative guidelines are in place, systems and procedures are laid down for the generators and recyclers both. We are confident that the same may happen sooner then later since practically all the environment conscious Nations have framed their policies or working on the same. We expect a similar such approach from the administration of our Country. Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has taken certain initiative in this direction and suggested guidelines. We are confident that the same may become reality soon.
We are sure that in the interest of environment, ecology and health, every one would subscribe to our views. We request all the corporate users to please work as an eco-socio friend of the society, over and above corporate social responsibility (CSR),
WE AT INFOTREK BELIEVE TO
WORK FOR A CAUSE���������..AND NOT JUST BECAUSE������..
ECORECO
ECO RECYCLING LIMITED, AN INITIATIVE BY INFOTREK SYSCOM LIMITED