Waste not Wasted !

China imposed a ban on the import of e-waste in 2002, this has been a major trigger for India to emerge as one of the largest dumping grounds of electronic waste for the developed world. Once the electronic equipment, mostly computers, turns obsolete in the West, they are exported as e-waste into the South Asian market, mostly to countires like India and Pakistan. A large number of workers, work in this recycling industry, extracting useful metals from electronic waste or e-waste, are putting both their health and the environment to great risk.

The New Moore Market lies in largely underdeveloped hemisphere of North Chennai in Tamil Nadu. The business here makes money out of electronic scrap dumped by developed nations. The money is good, but the risks are grave. There is very little concern about the risks or long-term implications of this business. The market streets are usually choked with smoke from burning electronic junk. Children, playing with the hazardous waste strewn around is a regular sight.

“We get waste and scrap both from within the country and abroad,” says Arun Kumar, an electronic waste handler in the junkyard. “We mostly get televisions, computers and refrigerator spare parts through our agents. We take out all the useful materials from the scrap and throw away or burn the rest. We get copper, iron, gold and brass from these scraps. We break the printed circuit boards into small pieces and send them back to the big dealers,” he added.
New Moore Market alone has a worker strength of 50, which includes women and children. The workers are paid a daily wage of 100 to 150 Indian rupees, depending on their workload. These workers are just a small fraction of a huge population that is a part of this illegal but flourishing trade. It is the worker who bears the brunt. It is the worker who compromises his health… all for a paltry sum. The bigger scrap dealers or agents make quite a killing, collecting metals like gold and copper from the scrap. Agents claim they need to burn the waste from at least ten computers to extract a gram of gold.

The business goes well beyond these local agents. The big computer manufacturers with global presence have been adopting a double standard recycling policy for developed and developing countries. This is because developing countries easily twist environmental laws and regulations to suit the trade and economy. “If you see, for example, International Business Machines (IBM) and Hewlett Packard (HP) are major manufacturers of computers, they have different rules for the US and different rules for us. HP has a recycling sector in the US. HP follows a take-back-policy in the US but it doesn’t follow any such rule in India. They have no such rules when it comes to countries like ours,” states Chirantana Kar, the project head of Toxics Links, an environmental non-governmental organisation (NGO).

The Basel Convention was formulated to promote cleaner technology and ban import of toxic waste, including obsolete computers. India ratified this convention in 1990.

Despite this, Chennai has been importing computer scrap from the US, Singapore, Malaysia, the Middle East and Belgium. Absence of proper legislation and proper technology to scan imports has seen increased import of hazardous e-waste masquerading as mixed waste or plastic scrap. There are also cases where obsolete junk comes in as charity or donations to schools and educational institutions. Exporting countries justify it, stating they are providing some form of employment to developing countries.

The governments track international trade across the world using a harmonised system of codes called the international trade classification codes. These are eight digit numbers that are given to all commodities. Cow dung has a number, horse manure has a number, zinc, ash has a number, but unfortunately e-waste does not have a number. So when computer scrap comes into a country, it is either clubbed under a larger grouping like the plastic scrap or mixed plastic waste or thing that have an Indian Trade Clarification based on Harmonised System [ITC (HS)] code. As a result, the assessing officer at the concerned port with the customs is unable to distinguish the electronic scrap consignment. He would have to open every container to find out. Basel Convention recognises the e-waste as a hazardous waste owing to the contaminants in it. There is no clear way by which the importing-exporting country governments can exercise a check on the movement of electronic scrap. Nobody has moved in the Basel Convention asking for a specialised code. So, as a result, though there is a lot of talk about this, there is no way actually to check this menace. The scrap dealers claim that sometimes they themselves are also not aware of what their cargo shipment might contain since the codes may differ from plastics to metal or even animal wastes.

It is high time that India adopts China’s strategy of stringent trade regulations on e-waste, either by organising the recycling sector or by advocating environmentally sound technologies. Till that day dawns, these scrap workers will continue to heave and sigh to eat one square meal.