e-waste disposal at press of a button!

Bengaluru: India is the third largest e-waste (electronic waste) generator in the world after China and the United States of America and together, they contribute 38% of the total amount of e-waste.

Apparently, only 7.8% of this waste is recycled and the rest is either haphazardly dumped in landfills or burnt along with other waste, releasing toxic contents into the atmosphere, causing serious and irrevocable environmental and health hazards.

The amended rules of E-Waste Management (2016) by Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change calls for classification of e-waste generators as bulk (educational institutions, software companies, organization with more than 50 employees) and non-bulk (individuals and smaller firms and organizations) consumers. Though the amount of waste generated individually by non-bulk consumers is insignificant, it collectively adds to the volume of waste generated, when accumulated for a specific geographic location.

Saahas, an NGO working in the field of waste management in partnership with Environmental Synergies in Development (ENSYDE) launched an awareness campaign bE Responsible, targeting the non-bulk consumers, in and around Bengaluru. Initially, door-to-door campaigns were the preferred mode, but owing to the pandemic, the campaign switched over to the virtual mode, where the awareness is 'gamified' (online games, sloganeering).

Later on, collection drives were launched, where e-waste from individual houses was collected, by collaborating with other organisations such as Beautiful Bengaluru, Waste Warriors and other individual contributors. To simplify the process for working professionals, an app based service called Dunzo was launched, where the waste generators have to just press a button, for safe and responsible handling of their e-waste.

One of the regular donators, Sonia Sharma says, "bE Responsible is my dependable partner when it comes to disposing of my e-waste responsibly. Thank you very much Ensyde and Sahaas for doing a remarkable job even during these Covid times . I was so happy to see members who came to pick the E-waste being so well trained to follow all the necessary precautions. They all were in masks and made sure I also wore one. They had gloves, neat and clean pick up sacks. Thank you very much, keep up the good work!"

Thus, the project gained enormous credibility and momentum among the people of Bengaluru and within a period of two months (October and November), close to one and half tons of e-waste has been collected, which will be duly recovered or recycled based on the state of its reception.