E-waste: An Urgent Need to Act
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E-waste or electronic waste broadly describes loosely discarded, left-over, out-of-date, broken, electrical or electronic devices. It includes mobile phones and charging adapters; computer and its accessories such as monitors, printers, keyboards and central processing units; remotes; CDs; headphones; batteries; LCD TVs; air conditioners; refrigerators and other household appliances.
E-waste has many harmful metals/elements present which require immediate treatment or they have many harmful effects on human health and the environment. There is therefore an international call for action against e-waste.
The soaring international demand for electric and electronic products is fueling a global rise in e-waste, which is set to reach 65.4 million tons annually by 2017. To put that into context, the global volume of discarded e-waste by 2017 will weigh almost equivalent to 200 Empire State Building. Globally only 40 per cent e-waste is collected for recycling, the rest ends up in landfills.
According to the ‘Global E-waste Monitor 2014’, a report by the United Nations University (UNU), India is now the fifth largest producer of e-waste and the third largest in Asia after China (6.0 Mt) and Japan (2.2 Mt) producing around 1.7 million tons (Mt) of e-waste in 2014. The UNU report cautions that the production will grow by 21 per cent (by volume) by 2017. A government report mentioned that in India e-waste constitutes 70 per cent of the landfills.
E-waste problem in India is twofold. One is the growing demand for electronic products each year with increasing mobile phone penetration and Internet usage. Second, India like other developing countries has become dumping grounds for e-waste.
E-waste, on the other hand, can also become a great source of rare metals. Studies have shown that e-waste has 40–50 times the amount of gold than in a gold ore. A study estimated that if the e-waste was properly recycled then the gold extracted would be more than the gold produced in the entire world in 2013.
Due to presence of precious metals, like gold, aluminium, copper and silver, many of these discarded e-waste products are recycled by informal recyclers in unsafe manner which also adds to the health and environmental problems. If e-waste is recycled in a proper manner, recycling one million cell phones can recover 50 pounds of gold, 550 pounds of silver, 20 thousand pounds of copper and other precious metals.
It is in this context, the Center for Global Management and Responsible Leadership (CGMRL) at XLRI Jamshedpur along with University of Queensland, Australia and IIT Kharagpur organized the two-day National Conference on E-waste Management on 13–14 January 2016.
CGMRL, with the objective of promoting global, ethical and sustainable business practices through the development of the requisite academic, curricular and outreach support for students and executives interested in global ethical business, was formed in 2010 at XLRI, Jamshedpur, India along with Loyola University, Chicago.
Initially, CGMRL conducted two National Conventions during 2012 and 2013 to ‘share case studies on Responsible Leadership’. Case studies from the two conventions were analyzed to develop a framework for responsible leadership.
Subsequent to the insights gained from the two National Conventions on Responsible Leadership, conferences focusing on sectorial issues are being planned; the first on ‘Agri-input Management Strategies for Sustainable Agriculture’ was held in 2014–2015; followed by the e-waste management conference in 2015–2016. A conference on ‘responsible marketing’ is proposed for 2016–2017.
Research papers covering different themes of e-waste were presented in the conference. In addition to perspectives from the industry and consultants, the ethical dimensions of e-waste were also presented.
Overall the conference focused on building a circular economy to ensure that e-waste is recycled and does not end up in landfills and cause environmental and health hazards. Towards this end, some of the obstacles and solutions were discussed.
Since one of the major obstacles to manage e-waste safely and effectively is the lack of reliable data that poses a challenge to (a) policy makers wishing to design an e-waste management strategy and (b) to industry wishing to make rational investment decisions; the conference discussed models on estimating the extent of e-waste being generated.
The conference also discussed the ways of improving the recycling process. One important area discussed was models of integrating informal sector along with formal sectors to improve the recycling percentage. Another point discussed was reviving the repair sector to increase the reuse.
Changing consumer mindset is important to address the core of the problem, so studies understanding the consumer behaviour from different parts of the country were discussed. One of the important behaviour identified was that discarded electronic products stored in homes are more than that in the landfills. So the conference concluded that the potential e-waste problem is more than what is reported. The ‘e-waste’ stored in the house would in future end up in landfills. That means the actual amount of e-waste after adding the waste stored in the houses would be threefold.
The conference also had a workshop to suggest action plans for managing e-waste. The suggestions identified in the Action plan are:
Newer products that are renewable and with more environment friendly parts can be developed.
As it would be costly to build an integrated recycling plant, it is suggested to divide recycling process into smaller processes and encourage small entrepreneurs to participate in the recycling process.
An App to coordinate with e-waste collectors for discarding electronic products should also be developed.
There is a need to change the mindset of the consumers. This could be done by sensitizing young children and students about the problem of e-waste and inculcate good habits towards the disposal of electronic gadgets.
Government needs to act as a facilitator to ensure coordination and communication among various stakeholders so that the e-waste recycling industry develops and flourishes. This would help recovery of precious and rare earth metals as well as create job opportunities.
Research institutes should be made partner with the industry to help develop newer technologies for better resource recovery from e-waste.
Programmes such as ‘Skill India’ to train the informal sector for better resource recovery from e-waste (especially on collection and dismantling) in an environmental safe and responsible manner should be developed.
A comprehensive integrated programme need to be developed which should be facilitated by government agencies with the assistance from institutes such as IITs and XLRI/IIMs.
This special issue has a selection of papers from the National Conference on E-waste Management covering areas of estimating demand of e-waste, consumer attitudes towards e-waste, ethical and legal perspectives to e-waste, integrated model for e-waste management using systems approach and strategies for e-waste collection.
Hope this issue would generate interest for greater research and programmes for managing e-waste in a safer manner.
Source: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0258042X16650059
