How will the E-Waste Recycling Sector benefit from Circular Economy? | Enterclimate

Although we saw the growing volume of #e-waste generated, this #waste was #recycled through unscientific recycling methods in the informal sector, that frequently deployed polluting techniques for dismantling and metal recovery and that too with far lesser efficiency. This also meant severe health hazards amongst workers and hazardous waste being dumped in landfills. Amidst this, India was also dependent on countries like China for imports of crucial rare earth metals due to their limited availability.
Today, one can see the government's impetus on promoting a circular economy in the EEE sector. The present E-Waste Management Rules,2022, which came into force on 1st April 2023, lists certain legal obligations for the manufacturer, producer, Refurbisher, dismantler, and recycler of e-waste.
For India to move in the direction of a circular model of manufacturing, the EEE manufacturers and traders needed a formalized collection, dismantling, and disposal network. Leakage of this waste to landfills has been largely plugged with the rules identifying the role of waste collection. Hazardous e-waste that earlier ended the informal sector has started getting channelized into the formal sector, thereby reducing the loss of precious metals and the pollution that was caused due to unscientific collection and storage of e-waste.
However, improper dismantling and the subsequent disposal of discarded e-waste have had severe impacts on the worker's health and environment since the waste contains hazardous constituent heavy metals. That is why the governmental agencies gave greater impetus when bringing the unorganized sector into the chain of resource recovery. For a country like India, eco-friendly collection, dismantling is crucial in preventing the leakage of waste into the informal sector.
Another important sector that has shown improvement is the Precious metal recovery business. The value of precious metals being lost along with e-waste is approximately 57 billion USD annually. The e-waste is considered a reservoir of precious and base metals such as silver, gold, copper, palladium, iron, copper, etc. Apart from the value and rareness of these metals, the fact that India imports many of the metals has also helped in the growth of precious metal recycling businesses, providing OEM manufacturers a cheaper and eco-friendly path to source these metals in manufacturing crucial components like PCB, batteries, computing processors, etc. As a result, manufacturers are also increasingly moving. Adopting circular models can help companies access untapped opportunities and lower environmental impact to address critical e-waste challenges.
Finally, the Role of TSDF in the Disposal of E-Waste cannot be ignored here.
TSDF plays a vital role in e-waste management and the utilization of non-recyclable e-waste generated by OEMs as well as other e-waste businesses performing the collection, dismantling recycling, and refurbishing. TSDFs specialize in the transporting and storage of hazardous components of the e-waste away from a generator's site as per the SOPs for their recycling, treatment, storage, or end-of-life disposal.
Now if we were to predict the Future of E-Waste Management Businesses, We could see an even bigger potential if the sector integrates practices to align with the Circular Economy approach.
1. A circular economy aims to replace the end-of-life concept of E-Waste with its restoration and regeneration while encouraging manufacturers to shift towards the usage of the superior design of materials, products, systems, and business models and effective waste elimination.
2. The circular approach aims at retaining the value of resources, products at their highest by keeping them in use as long as possible, minimizing wastage at each life-cycle stage, and extracting the maximum value through recovering, reusing, repairing, remanufacturing, and regenerating products at the end of each service value.
3. Circular Economy in E-Waste management will nurture competitiveness among the OEMs as they know that their long-term survival will depend on sustainable and eco-friendly practices, and the successful implementation of eco-efficiency will contribute to their success.
4. The recently introduced Green Credit Scheme, a key component in the Mission LiFE initiative of the Government of India, will also help boost the circular approach in the economy of manufacturing and will, in turn, also benefit the e-waste recycling businesses.
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