Near the city centre, the clock tower, is the gleaming ‘mobile lane’, home to around 40 shops selling all varieties of mobile phones and electronic accessories. This creates a new problem for the city’s waste management authorities — managing the increasing amounts of e-waste being generated.
Significantly, the state’s pollution control board does not have a dedicated database on e-waste as it does on solid waste or plastic waste (available on its website). The state with 13 districts has only seven registered e-waste dismantlers and recyclers. Authorisation for all these e-waste dismantlers and recyclers seems to have expired in 2018, with no current information available on the number of authorised e-waste recycles.
The traditional local kabadiwalla is the main collector of e-waste generated in Dehradun. Some crude recycling is done locally. But mostly, the kabadiwallahs sell their e-waste to dealers in Moradabad in UP, which is emerging as one of the biggest hubs for informal recycling of electronic waste.
At an all India level, the electronics industry has emerged as one of the fastest growing segments in terms of production and export. As per an ASSOCHAM report, India is ranked 5th in the world in e-waste generation, behind countries like the USA, China, Japan and Germany. “Recent spikes in the world’s total e-waste amount is mainly attributed to India,” said the report.
Another ASSOCHAM-KPMG report identified that computer equipment accounts for almost 70 per cent of the country’s total e-waste, followed by telecommunication equipment-phones (12%), electrical equipment (8%) and medical equipment (7%), with the remainder being household e-waste.
This increase in the quantity of e-waste is largely because of increased consumption and obsolescence. Users are discarding old computers, mobiles and other equipment much earlier than before. According to the Global E-Waste Monitor 2017, published by United Nations University, the volume of e-waste is growing at an estimated 21 per cent annually.
The report predicts that by 2020, e-waste from old computers in India will have increased by 500 per cent since 2007. Discarded mobile phone waste will be about 18 times higher, television waste will be 1.5 to 2 times higher and the number of discarded refrigerators is likely to double from their 2007 levels. It is estimated that only 1.5 per cent of e-waste generated in the country gets recycled.
A lack of awareness about e-waste and e-waste recycling, as well as the role of the unorganized sector, add to the problem. The base metals that can be reused are lost, and this results in soil contamination from the unorganized and crude processes of dismantling.
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