The alarm bell on Guwahati’s e-waste stockpile

The regular sight of waste pickers purchasing discarded computers, keyboards, cellphones, and household appliances like refrigerators and washing machines door-to-door and selling them to scrap dealers in Guwahati paints a grim picture of hazardous disposal of e-waste (electrical and electronic waste) in the capital city. It also speaks volumes about the lack of awareness among city residents about the safe disposal of e-waste. The exponential rise in sales of electronic and electrical products has also led to an alarming rise in the number of discarded products in every household. The spread of digital technology, e-offices, and smart classrooms in educational institutions has also given rise to institutional procurement of electronic and electrical products and a substantial generation of institutional e-waste in the city. Channelling the e-waste disposal from bulk and institutional consumers is easier than channelling those from individual household consumers. In both cases, the city must have an authorized e-waste collector, dismantler, and recycler with adequate capacity to absorb thousands of discarded electrical and electronic products. The hard reality is that the city does not have any e-waste management plant that can take care of all these. This ground situation explains why the public notice issued by the Pollution Control Board of Assam (PCBA), asking all bulk consumers and domestic consumers not to sell any e-waste generated by them to any unauthorized waste pickers, virtually remained on paper for the past nearly seven years. The PCBA notice also stated that all e-waste generated after the end-of-life of products should be sold to only authorized e-waste collection centres, recyclers, dismantlers, and refurbishers. The state currently has only one e-waste dismantling and refurbishing facility, and another is in the process of being established. The PCBA has directed Guwahati Municipal Corporation authorities to channelize e-waste, if found mixed with municipal waste, to these or any other registered facilities after proper segregation. The GMC authorities will also be required, in accordance with the directive, to conduct joint monitoring of scrap yards and other unorganized waste collection facilities periodically with the PCBA officials to curb informal trading and dismantling of e-waste. Such directives can produce effective results only when the city has multiple e-waste collection centres and an agency to collect it door-to-door. The GMC deploying garbage-carrying vans with segregated compartments for different types of waste, including a separate compartment for e-waste like the garbage vans of Indore City, can be a pragmatic approach. The GMC has introduced colour-coded vans for dry and wet waste, but the majority of residents have not started segregating waste at the household level. If awareness is not built on waste segregation, then the mere provision of a separate compartment for the collection of e-waste in these vans is not going to change the situation much. The GMC authorities undertook an e-waste detox drive in collaboration with an NGO last year to create awareness and collect it, with a primary focus on schools, colleges, apartments, and housing societies. This was a laudable initiative and found to be effective as it facilitated the collection of three tonnes of e-waste after nearly four weeks of campaigning and collection. Undertaking more such drives will go a long way in generating awareness, at least among the city residents, not to sell discarded electrical and electronic goods to waste pickers and store them to deposit with any NGO or authorized agency whenever they come to their doorsteps for collection. On their part, the GMC authorities putting in place the mechanism for collection of e-waste kept separately by residents and bulk consumers will be crucial to sustaining the change in behavioural practice. In the event of a delay in collection, the people would revert to the unscientific practice of selling it to waste pickers or dumping it along with daily household garbage, rendering their entire efforts in creating awareness in vain. Till a comprehensive mechanism of doorstep collection is started, the GMC authorities can place drop boxes at prominent places in each ward to facilitate the deposition of e-waste, parallel to a sustained awareness drive. It will at least ensure that the current practice of unauthorized dismantling of e-waste by scrap dealers, which poses serious environmental and public health hazards to city residents, is effectively curbed. Streamlining the segregation and collection will also attract private investments for setting up authorized plants for dismantling, recycling, and refurbishing. The new rules of e-waste management notified on April 1, 2023, allow the collection and processing of e-waste only by registered producers, recyclers, and refurbishers, and producers are given recycling targets based on the quantity of e-waste generated by them. If the PCBA fails to enforce the responsibilities of the producers and the GMC authorities fail to put in place e-waste management, then a public health hazard from unscientific dismantling will deteriorate into a public health emergency. Increasing sales of electrical and electrical products signify an expanding market for these products in the city and economic progress, but the rising volume of e-waste has set off the alarm bell ringing to remind the authorities to take urgent action.