Finding climate-friendly solutions for e-waste management

Context

E-waste has become an alarming issue worldwide, especially in developing countries. India, with more than two million tonnes per year, ranks third among countries producing e-waste. Much of this is imported from other countries, thus compounding the problem. Only less than 2 per cent of the annual e-waste is recycled and more than 95 per cent is managed by the informal sector. Many scrap dealers dismantle and recycle the products using unsafe practices. This leads to the contamination of soil, water, and air, not only causing long-term health risks, but also greatly impacting the environment.

Key challenges include the dominance of the informal sector, unconscious consumer behaviour, low collection rates, crude recycling methods, lack of an adequate infrastructure and the need for innovative technologies to cover a wide spectrum of e-waste recycling. These issues can be effectively addressed by increasing awareness among actors along the e-waste value chain, enhancing the recycling infrastructure and collecting and channeling e-waste recycling mechanisms.

Objective

Actors along the e-waste management value chain are more aware of negative climate impacts and the recycling and disposal infrastructure for e-waste has been improved.

Approach

The project works to achieve four major outputs:

• Increase stakeholder awareness of climate-sensitive e-waste management by disseminating information about safe e-waste management among relevant actors.
• Enhancing the e-waste recycling infrastructure by improving the capabilities of people in the informal sector and among potential entrepreneurs.
• Promoting the collection of e-waste in Delhi NCR and Hyderabad by supporting the channeling of e-waste for formal recycling and disposal with the involvement of the informal sector.
• Policy advocacy by providing policy advice and contributing to the National Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Framework to enhance the country’s e-waste management ecosystem.

 Last update: July 2023