By Joydeep Gupta
New Delhi, Aug 18 (IANS) India is close to finalising the world’s strictest set of rules on disposing of electronic waste. The rules, framed by electronics equipment manufacturers with the help of NGOs, are now being given the final touch by the ministry of environment and forests.

Under the new ‘E-waste (Management & Handling) Rules’, each manufacturer of a computer, music system, mobile phone or any other electronic gadget will be “personally” responsible for the final safe disposal of the product when it becomes a piece of e-waste, said Guruswamy Ananthapadmanabhan, programme director of Greenpeace International.

This “personal” responsibility makes it the world’s most stringent set of rules for e-waste disposal.

The NGO has worked with India’s Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT) to prepare the rules that have been submitted to the ministry. Eighteen electronic brands, including Nokia, Wipro, HCL, Acer and Sony Ericsson, have already begun implementing plans on toxic chemical phase-out and take-back of old end-of-life products in India.

Apart from Greenpeace, civil society group Toxicslink and Germany’s external aid agency GTZ have worked with MAIT since April 2008 to draft the new set of rules, whose main objectives are:

* To address the specific requirements for e-waste management;

* To put in place an effective mechanism to regulate the generation, collection, storage, transportation, import and export of e-waste; and

* To ensure environmentally sound recycling of e-waste.

“This includes establishment of a collection system, environmentally sound refurbishment and recycling, mandatory provisions for reduction in hazardous substances and producer responsibility,” Ananthapadmanabhan told IANS.

“The proposed rules would provide enabling policies and procedures that would be legally binding for producers, collection agencies, dismantlers, recyclers, transporters, etc., handling e-waste.”

According to a recent report of the UN Environment Programme, 20-50 million tonnes of e-waste is generated annually worldwide. In India, a 2008 estimate by the industry put it at 382,979 tonnes per year, which will go up to 1.6 million tonnes in the next three years.

E-waste now makes up five percent of all municipal solid waste worldwide, more or less the same amount as general plastic waste.

As India piles up more and more junk computers, IT peripherals, music systems and mobile phones, a highly dangerous informal industry in their reprocessing and recycling has sprung up, concentrated on the outskirts of Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai.

Home-based recyclers burn wires and integrated chips over small flames to get at the copper and other metal inside, inhaling toxic fumes in the process. The trade has been banned, at least in Delhi, but continues behind closed doors.

The new rules propose to move this recycling to the formal sector. Asked what would happen to the current recyclers, estimated by NGOs to be around 35,000, Ananthapadmanabhan said a pilot project to integrate them into the formal recycling process was already on in Delhi’s Shastri Nagar area, and this could be expanded.

The new rules take collection, storage and transportation of e-waste that are not hazardous out of the hazardous waste handling rules category. But dismantling and reprocessing of this waste is hazardous, stressed the Greenpeace official.

“The whole process of registration and authorisation under hazardous waste rule discourages people to go for effective e-waste management practices.

“Unlike hazardous waste, e-waste has high recycling and reuse potential which if done properly can reduce load at disposal and at the same time help in conservation of material through reuse of material in manufacturing,” he added.

The new set of rules makes a producer of electronic and electrical equipment responsible for the entire lifecycle of its products including end-of-life phase. The producer has the first level of responsibility of proper collection and recycling of discarded electronic and electrical products of its own brands in environmentally sound manner.

It also holds dealers, retailers and consumers responsible for proper and effective collection and recycling of the electronic waste. It will be the consumer’s responsibility now to return a discarded electronic product to the designated collection centre.

Dealers are responsible for proper handling and storage of the e-waste. Except consumers, everyone in the value chain, including producers, have to take permission from a designated authority for handling, collection, transport, dismantling and material recovery of the e-waste.

The new rules also provide for the phase-out of certain hazardous chemicals from the electronic products launched in the Indian market, Ananthapadmanabhan said.

The proposed rules put a complete ban on import of any kind of electronic and electrical equipment for dismantling, recycling and disposal purposes. “The equipment can only be imported for refurbishment and repair purposes with clear declaration of such purpose at originating country and with a condition that it will be exported back, meeting the purpose, to the original country,” he said.

(Joydeep Gupta can be contacted at joydeep.g@ians.in)