UK dumping e-waste on India?

Environmental groups reportedly found e-waste being exported to China, Pakistan and India.

Is Britain using India as a dumping ground for its e-waste?

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Reports in the British press say that Britain is throwing out more than a million tonnes of electronic "e-waste" such as broken computer monitors and discarded mobile phones every year.

A Guardian report said that last year, 23,000 tonnes of IT and other electronic equipment was shipped out illegally, mostly to China, West Africa, Pakistan and India.

It said in one instance, documents on a container waiting to be shipped from Felixstowe to Pakistan declared that its contents were innocuous plastic packaging.

But when customs officers opened it up they found tonnes of broken computer monitors and other electronic waste collected by a south Wales company, which was sending it to Lahore to be dismantled by hand for its lead and other valuable toxic contents.

The illegal shipment of hazardous waste was reportedly blocked and returned.

According to the government's pollution watchdog Environment Agency, e-waste exports are worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

Last year, such waste involved tens of thousands of old computers, 500,000 television sets, three million refrigerators, 160,000 tonnes of other electrical equipment and millions of discarded mobile phones, all sent to the poorest countries in the world.

But the Guardian report said the agency admitted it had no idea how much of the waste was being deliberately dumped on poor countries by companies trying to avoid paying increasingly high disposal costs in Britain, and how much was only technically illegal because companies filled in the forms incorrectly.

"It is not necessarily all illegal," according to an agency spokesman. "There is a legitimate international trade in goods, with an overseas market for usable equipment such as computers and TVs. Further work will help us to find out how much is illegal. Our investigations suggest some exporters are not seeking the appropriate legal authorisation."

The report said that China and India, thought to be the target of most e-waste exports, had urged Britain and other rich countries through the UN and other international forums to stop exporting hazardous waste because they did not have the facilities to inspect all the traffic being sent.

A major investigation by an international coalition of environmental groups this year reportedly found huge quantities of e-waste being exported to China, Pakistan and India where it was being reprocessed in operations extremely harmful to both human health and the environment.