India swamped by 420,000 tonnes of e-waste: lobby group

Yahoo News 27 Oct 09;

NEW DELHI (AFP) – India faces a mounting challenge to dispose of an estimated 420,000 tonnes of electronic waste a year that it generates domestically and imports from abroad, a green lobby group said Tuesday.

Priti Mahesh, senior programme officer with New Delhi-based Toxic Link, said there were no separate figures for e-waste generated by Indians and the amount imported, but the scale of the problem was growing.

"It is a major problem and growing at the rate of 10 to 15 percent annually. We think by 2010, the e-waste in India will go up to 800,000 tonnes," Mahesh told a conference on the subject in New Delhi.

Pollution control officials, who declined to give figures for the quantity of e-waste, said India had only six regular recycling units with an annual capacity of 27,000 tonnes.

The rapid advance of technology in mobile phones or televisions was behind the increase in waste, as well as increased demand from India's growing middle classes who see electronic appliances as important status symbols.

Most e-waste is dismantled by workers with bare hands that exposes them to carcinogenic metals including barium, lead, copper and cadmium, a study by the group showed.

"It's already a problem and on its way to becoming worse because 97 percent of waste gets recycled in hazardous conditions," Mahesh said.

Responding to these concerns, S. Saroj, a federal environment ministry official, said the government would bring in legislation to curb the imports of e-waste and regulate recycling.

"The draft law will be ready in the next four to six months," she said acknowledging the need for tighter control and monitoring of the sector.

Most of the waste from abroad came in the form of charity donations of old technology that finds its way to dumps or imports from countries like the United States, she said.