Govt readies new rules to manage e-waste

The Centre has readied new rules making it mandatory for electronic appliance makers to set up centres around the country to collect and safely dispose of electronic waste.

Updated on: Apr 12, 2010, 24:21:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Centre has readied new rules making it mandatory for electronic appliance makers to set up centres around the country to collect and safely dispose of electronic waste.

The environment ministry will issue a draft notification for managing e-waste, of which India will be second largest generator by 2012, soon. “The new draft rules will be out within a week,” a ministry official said.

According to the new rules, citizens will have to dispose of electronic appliances at designated centres instead of in a municipal bin. “The citizens may also get some money for that,” said Ravi Aggarwal, of NGO Toxic Link, who has been on the environment ministry’s committee on e-waste.

E-waste is currently defined under Hazardous Management Rules, which were applicable more to industry than to households. With e-waste becoming a pollution challenge, the ministry has decided on a separate regulation, which Aggarwal described as a “significant step”.

In the new rules, the ministry has for the first time defined “extended producer responsibility” in dealing with household e-waste. That would mean setting up centres around India where citizens can dispose of items such as computers, television sets and refrigerators.

“The producers will be responsible to ensure that electronic waste is disposed of in an environment friendly manner,” a ministry official said. The manufacturers can sell the e-waste to registered recyclers or dispose of them at designated sites.

Toxic Link and Information Technology industry in a study found that if e-waste is sold to recyclers, the companies could provide an incentive to citizens of up to Rs 400 for a computer to take back their waste.

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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