Professional Documents
Culture Documents
In The 20th Century
In The 20th Century
levels and hence they have very little awareness regarding the potential
hazards of E-waste. Among the urban poor, there are a substantial
number of women and children engaged in various recycling activities
which further exaggerate the problem of E-waste as they are more
vulnerable to the hazards from this kind of waste. Even when the toxicity
of e-waste is
known , e-Waste is handled in the informal sector in a
improper manner, leading to lot of problems for the environment and for
people's health. Extracting metals like copper and gold in open acid baths,
which is illegal, releases toxins such as dioxins, heavy metals, lead,
cadmium, mercury and brominated flame retardants (BFRs). Acid and
chemical residues contaminate water and soil. Informal recyclers work
without protective clothing, exposing themselves to hazardous chemicals
that can lead to physical injuries mercury, for instance, can cause brain
and kidney damage, and BFRs disrupt hormonal function and chronic
illnesses like asthma and skin diseases. Most of these informal recycling
centres are within community areas or within residential areas and so that
entire families are exposed to the toxic elements.
Thus proper management is necessary while disposing or recycling e-wastes.
It is important to involve experts in designing communication tools for
creating awareness at the highest level to promote the aim of safe disposal of
e-Waste. Information on authorised recyclers may be accessible through the
internet and other electronic and printed materials.
CPCB may set up programs so as to promote recycling among citizens and
businesses. Collection of e-waste should be encouraged by placing e-waste
bins at different locations. Citizens should be made aware that e-wastes
should never be disposed with garbage and other household wastes but
should be deposited in designated e-waste bins or authorised e-waste
recyclers.
As moving from informal sector to formal sector involves capital expenditure,
PCB may come up with institutions and programmes to promote technology
transfer and provide financial support to facilitate the movement of a
recycler to the formal sector.
DeitY has developed processing technology for recycling and reuse of
electronic waste at National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur,
India(CSIRs R&D lab). Pilot plant demonstration was done to recover
precious metals from 1MT of e-waste with a recovery rate of 95%. Printed
circuit board processing technology was successfully developed amd
demonstrated at Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology, Hyderabad
and e-Parisara , Bangalore . Commercialization of these technologies should