What you can do with your e-waste

Electronic Waste is now a growing problem that circumvented the world with increasing landfills of personal gadgets and electronics. More and more electronics being sent to incinerators or landfills and toxic substances like lead and mercury are seeping into groundwater. By 2017, the annual amount of e-waste produced worldwide is set to reach 65.4 million tonnes which is almost 20% of the weight of every living person on the planet.

What is e-waste

E-waste grows at an exponential rate of 3-5 percent every year and electronic waste constitutes about eight percent of municipal waste. This is due to the trend of newer is better and out with the old, which has resulted in tons of electronic garbage.

According to Wealth from Waste by Lal and Sarma, E-Waste is defined as, ‘Waste generated from used electronic devices and household appliances which are not fit for their originally intended use and are destined for recovery, recycling and disposal’.

A map of the state of Global e-waste

Scenario in India and the World

India has largest number of recycling companies that figure in the range of a 100. But with the intention of making a quick buck; most people choose the grey market route, where ‘buyers’ are willing to pay a premium.

The electronics market worldwide has a total turnover of $1.774 trillion, where mobile phones, TVs, PCs and electronics other than car electronics account for 53 percent of the total electronics industry.

According to the World Bank, India has just 16 computers per 1000 people wherein only 9 million out of 168 million rural households and 15 million of the 78 million urban households currently have a PC. Only 2.2 percent public schools have computers with an average 5/10 children sharing a single PC. Hence, availability, access and penetration of PCs is abysmally low at present. This is in contrast of the 17% increase in internet users where the mobile user base of Indians have grown from 10 million to 100 million in ten years.

What is happening due to e-waste trade

According to figures published in the Global E-waste Monitor 2014 and compiled by the United Nations University, last year an estimated 41.8 million metric tonnes of e-waste was discarded throughout the world. In Australia, Of 19.71kg per person per year, almost 30 per cent comes from digital and audio-visual items. Discarded electronics in India, which produces around 800,000 tonnes of e-waste a year

There are few additional mentions in the article: A Connected World: A Boon or Bane?

There is hardly an effort to recycle and reduce the e-waste ‘burden’ on the planet. Most of the waste is traded with Asian countries and several have to suffer with diseases like lead poisoning in the blood stream.