Although the environmental pollution can be traced back to the time of homo sapiens on earth, the technological progress of man in the recent century has given him immense power over nature and resulted in endless and senseless encroachment on nature. This has brought the man kind to the brink of global environment catastrophe.
Rapid progress in technology has brought about rapid obsolescence of electronic goods. And these obsolete goods are being dumped from developed countries into India and brought the e-waste problem to the verge of spilling over in acute crisis.
Electronic Waste or e-waste discards is one of the fastest growing segments of our country's waste stream. The unethical export of e-waste by developed nations to countries like India is forcing the burden of development to communities ill-equipped to deal with such a waste. India is still a long way to go in coming to terms with the facts about safe handling of such e-waste. All these waste comes into India under the pretext of reuse, or donation.
It is observed that US alone dumps 30 million computers a year and this dump ends up either in India or China. Recycling in India is way much cheaper than doing it in some of developed countries, one of the main reason why this dump ends up here. Unlike the developed countries, India does not have norms for handling the e-waste and the cheap labor makes it cost-effective and profitable for the local traders. Without efficient technology, the e-waste goes through inefficient process of manual recycling. The collection and allocation of e-waste is done by middlemen, scrap dealers and rag pickers. The informal recycling system includes acceptable processes such as dismantling and sorting but also very harmful processes such as burning and leaching in order to extract metals from electronic equipment. Harmful techniques like burning wires are common practice in the informal recycling sectors
in big cities in India. Majority of the e-waste contains toxic materials in them. They contain mercury, lead, flame retardants, PVC coatings of wires and many other hazardous chemicals and ingredients. When the electronic components such as chips on the motherboard, resistors, capacitors etc. are extracted or reconditioned, these chemicals and toxic ingredients are released into the environment. The rest of the parts are burned or dumped into the landfills which are highly hazardous to the humans, animals, plant and the whole environment. These toxins contaminate the soil, groundwater and air and also affect the workers who do this labor without any protective clothing such as gloves or face masks. This results in dangerous working conditions where health is compromised. This is due to the fact that the process of extraction too uses all kinds of chemicals like acids, which get dumped into the soil and mixes with the groundwater. The people actually doing the the recycling are people on less than half a dollar a day - women and children working in very shanty-like, disastrous, inhuman conditions. For them its a choice between this poison and their livelihood. This problem has assumed a global dimension, of which India is at the core and is an affected part. India needs to have strong rules and
regulations in place to combat this kind of a terror. India has already instituted a number of regulations for better management of hazardous waste, but unfortunately none of these directly deal specifically with e-waste. One of solutions to the problems of recycling e-waste world over is to ensure that the producers of the electronic goods do not use toxic substances in their products and that they take the ownership and responsibility of safe disposal or safe recycling of their products that has reached an end of life. It is time the industries realized the long-term environmental implications of e-waste and how the technology created by them to make life easier and comfortable, has a potential to do just the opposite.
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