E-waste management in India and its climatic perspective
Student name: Ms Anushree Majumdar
Guide: Dr Priyanka Kaushal
Year of completion: 2016
Host Organisation: Emergent Ventures India Pvt. Ltd.
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Atul Sanghal
Abstract: Electronic waste or e-waste is the waste generated from discarded/end of life electronic items.
In recent times with change in lifestyle of people all around the world, high demand of new and
improved electronic items, technology obsolescence, the generation of e-waste has seen a huge rise.
With generation, comes the problem of proper management and handling. India is one of the leading
producers of e-waste and this project give insights to the overall state of generation, management and
handling of e-waste in India. The policies which govern the e-waste in India are also highlighted. The
major stakeholders involved in managing e-waste in each step, in India needs to be identified and
proper responsibility should be given to each one of them. The percentage of unregistered e-waste
recyclers present in India is very huge compared to the registered recyclers, which is a matter of
serious concern. Apart from the recycling facilities being registered under Central Pollution Control
Board (CPCB), there are few recyclers who have international certifications and thus giving added
advantage.
The mining of metals and precious metals from mines lead to carbon di-oxide emissions and
huge impact on climate change. E-waste contains metals, precious metals and plastics. Secondary
mining/urban mining (extracting metals and plastics from e-waste) is the key function of the recycling
facilities. The amount of carbon di-oxide emissions reduced if metals are extracted from e-waste has
been evaluated in this project. A clean development mechanism (CDM) methodology proposed by
UNFCC was followed to estimate the emission reduction by extracting base metals, precious metals,
plastics found in abundance in some of the equipment’s which form a major share in the e-waste volume
and it was found that the baseline emission was very much higher than the project activity emission
and so much focus can be given to this process so as to combat climate change in India.
Keywords: E-waste generation, stakeholders, policies, certifications, emission reduction
