Centre to pitch in towards e-waste recycling

The Environment Ministry has decided to launch a scheme for recycling electronic waste. Recycling facilities will be set up on a public-private-partnership mode across the country.

Updated on: Apr 29, 2010, 01:53:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Environment Ministry has decided to launch a scheme for recycling electronic waste. Recycling facilities will be set up on a public-private-partnership mode across the country.

“The Central and the state governments will pay 25 per cent each and the rest of the cost would be borne by the private player,” Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh told HT. Under the scheme, re-cycling hubs will be developed in major cities to re-use waste electronic parts. The scheme is also aimed at bringing the informal sector, scattered in residential colonies, under the ambit of some regulation.

The announcement comes a day after the ministry notified draft rules for regulating electronic waste, fixing responsibility upon each player — pollution control boards, manufacturers, retail dealers, consumers and recyclers.

The pollution boards will have to certify agencies authorised collection centres, which will receive electronic waste from dealers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers.

Manufacturers, who can also set up collection centres, would have to provide an unique identification number on equipment to track the product and must have a provision for collecting the “end of life” products. Each electronic appliance retailer will have to provide a demarcated area to collect e-waste and cannot refuse to take back a used appliance it had sold.

The consumers will have to deposit e-waste either with the dealer or at authorised collection centres or pay a fine up to Rs 500, the draft rules say.

Only those registered with the Central Pollution Control Board will be allowed to do business and will be liable for penalty in case of any damage to environment or health of workers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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