The plasma TV now owns pride of place in your living room and the good old television of 10 years is on its way to the dump. Well, watch out. Discarded gizmos and home appliances constitute electronic waste and a new set of disposal rules makes it mandatory for you to sell e-waste only to registered agents of the Central Pollution Control Board and state Pollution Control Boards.
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The new Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) rules drafted under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1996 are expected to come into force by early next year after considering inputs from all stakeholders, officials of the ministry of environment and forest said. Once that happens, consumers will have to take steps to ensure that waste is handled and disposed without affecting the environment --- or else pay a fine.
This is the first ever regulation on electronic waste and it puts the onus more on the consumer and operator rather than the producer, unlike in the West. "The approach will put undue responsibility on the consumer and the local municipal authorities without providing any ownership of the solutions," said Ravi Aggarwal of Toxi Links, an NGO working on e-waste.
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Government officials, however, explain that pushing the responsibility on the producer will not work in India as it will kill the huge recycling industry. "Environment can't be at the cost of livelihood of millions of people who are dependent on collecting and recycling electronic waste," said an official.
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Government officials, however, explain that pushing the responsibility on the producer will not work in India as it will kill the huge recycling industry. "Environment can't be at the cost of livelihood of millions of people who are dependent on collecting and recycling electronic waste," said an official.
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The ministry has tried to tread the middle path. While the rules concentrate more on regulating the recycling industry and management of e-waste in companies and government offices, it also allows e-manufacturing companies to run "take back schemes" provided they have a proper mechanism for further use of the waste. Even before the rules come into force, IT major Wipro is expected to come up with a "take back" policy in September.
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Establishments with more than 50 employees will have to prepare an inventory of electronic goods before auctioning them to registered recycling agents.
The unorganised recycling industry would have to become more organised to implement the rules and replace traditional methods of disposal by modern environment friendly gadgets. They will have to maintain data of the e-waste received and recycled into a final product and submit the records to the designated bodies in the state. The state governments, on their part, will have to designate areas for dumping or recycling e-waste. The Centre will constitute EWA — E- Waste Agency — to advise the states on technical matters.
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.
