Ghaziabad civic body to launch door-to-door e-waste collection from July

Starting next month, the Ghaziabad municipal corporation will start door-to-door e-waste collection from households

Starting next month, the Ghaziabad municipal corporation will start door-to-door e-waste collection from households. The move is expected to generate an estimated 500 tonnes of e-waste every month.

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Officials said that they have floated an expression of interest (EOI) for the e-waste collection and interested agencies are expected to submit their respective bids by June 15.

At present, the civic body collects dry and wet waste through its door-to-door collection vehicles from the 100 residential wards across the city and this segregated waste also contains hazardous e-waste. At present, households depend primarily on scrap dealers to sell their e-waste.

“We have floated an EOI and are waiting for the agencies to submit their bids. If there is one bid, we will deploy the operator for the entire city and if there are two, we will deploy one operator for cis-Hindon and one for trans-Hindon. In case there are more operators, we may assign zones or groups of zones. They will operate on a door-to-door collection basis and will also attend calls by residents,” said Mahendra Singh Tanwar, Ghaziabad municipal commissioner.

The type of e-waste generated from households includes old refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, vacuum cleaners, blenders, laptops, PCs, television sets, telephones, mobile phones, etc.

The e-waste disposal at present is not scientific and is mostly taken up by scrap dealers.

“There are many areas along the border with Delhi where illegal units operate and they burn this type of waste to recover metals. The burning process increases pollution as a result of emission of toxic gases and the waste water mixed with chemicals (used for cleaning waste) also percolates to the ground and may contaminate groundwater. Apart from streamlining the process for e-waste, the corporation should also conduct awareness drives for residents,” said Rajendra Tyagi, councillor from Raj Nagar.