E Waste Management: Challenges that India faces
The rise of digitization has had both a positive and negative impact on India. On the positive side, Indian citizens are more in tuned with the current technology. Önceliği elden ödeme olan şirinevler escort bayanları seçmek siz beyler için doğrudur. On the negative side, the amount of electronic waste has risen. While EPR certificate has to try to deal with this rise by mandating E waste management for the importers and manufacturers, India still has a long way to go.
In short, there are challenges to E waste management that India is facing and acknowledging them is important if we are to see sustainable growth in future.
What are electronic wastes?
Before we take a look at the challenges, it’s important to look at their root, the electronic waste products.
Electronic wastes come into existence when the electronic products become unfit for usage. Examples of Electronic wastes are Computers, mainframes, servers, CDs, lithium ion batteries, cellular phones and more.
However, this “original” definition of electronic waste no longer holds up. Why?
What is the new definition of electronic wastes?
Normally, it’s human nature to use a particular product to the point it’s completely obliterated. This thorough exploitation, although seen by many under negative light, ensured that the amount of electronic waste didn’t grow.
However, as technological upgrades started to happen at an increased rapid speed, technological advances started to get outdated quite quickly. As a result, people started to upgrade their products on a yearly basis. These products that have not yet become useless, started to be considered as such by their users.
As a result, the definition of electronic wastes has taken a different turn.
Therefore, the new definition of electronic waste is this:
Electronic wastes are electronic devices that have gone obsolete by the users who only seek latest technology in their devices.
The new definition coupled with a few other factors is the reason India is facing challenges when it comes to E waste management.
What are the challenges India faces with E waste management in India?
EPR Certification came into existence in India to tackle the following E waste management challenges that India currently faces:
- Informal Sector: Pretty much all of the electronic waste management is still under the informal sector. Consequently, there is no networked approach to management of electronic wastes. In turn, the management practices are not getting scaled according to the
- Lack of general awareness: Electronic waste management is not a buzzword. It doesn’t roll off people’s tongue and it talks about the potential dangers to the environment in abstract terms. Simply put, it’s not something that the general public is interested in. As a result, there is a general lack of awareness around this issue that the government is still ignoring with all its might.
- Companies aren’t coming forward: Most manufacturers are only concerned with making profits, and not the environment. Their lucrative goals don’t encompass the presence of recycling plants or electronic waste management. In short, they think it’s a waste of time diverting resources for the sake of something that isn’t going to yield them any profit.
Courtesy of these challenges, the government had no choice but to make the EPR license mandatory. And so far, it has enabled India to take electronic waste management more seriously than before.
How EPR Certificate helps India meet its E- waste management goals?
“If you want to convince them to do something, order them to do so” – that’s the ideology the Government of India had to take to make electronic producers take recycling seriously. With the introduction of EPR Certificate, more companies now must either establish a recycling plant or get into an agreement with one.
As a result, more and more entrepreneurs are coming up with innovative ways to introduce recycling sections within their manufacturing facilities. They are finally willing to stand behind sustainable development in India.