Terror is on top of the mind for all of us these days. Another big terrorist
in the making is e-waste. There is no environment and pollution expert today who
denies that discarded desktops, laptops, cell phones, and other electronic
equipment that lies underneath or the hundreds of gadgets in fashion today,
constitute to be one of the biggest toxic waste in the world.
The irony is that we, the IT industry contribute about 30 percent of the
total e-waste happening. All the corporate social responsibility measures go for
a toss in the face of such deadly heavy metals including lead, mercury, and
cadmium being shoved into the environment.
The other stark reality as per a MAIT e-waste Assessment Study, 94 percent of
organizations using IT did not have any policy on disposal of junk. The bigger
problem is that not too many of us realize and understand the enormity of the
e-waste. Thanks to poor awareness, today there is no way to track when and where
PCs and cell phones are ready to be thrown away, and where.
On top of this, since many other countries do not allow any e-waste to be
disposed off in their land, unscrupulous traders are dumping the junk in poor
countries like India where money is made from waste. And the law in India that
blocks dumping of e-waste from rich nations is easily by-passed by terming the
shipment as donation.
 |
|
Ibrahim ahmad |
Managing e-waste also has a lot of other angles to it. You need recycling
plants and currently there are only two in the country, and they too are
operating at sub minimum level. You have the huge un-organized sector of junk
dealers whose livelihood depends on this.
While the awareness dawns on people and laws come in place, I think the
company CEOs and CIOs must take it upon themselves to ensure that discarded
systems do not contribute to environment poisoning. For instance one way would
be to find out schools and other needy organizations that will be very happy to
take these machines and use them for another year or two. But such `simple and
easy' solutions have overwhelming execution and monitoring challenges.
For India, despite the low PC penetration, the e-waste figures are beginning
to get alarming. According to one estimate during 2007, about 3.3 lakh ton of
e-waste was generated. But the way mobile phones are being sold and discarded in
the country, and desktop and notebook sales is picking up, the situation could
go out of hand. By year 2011 e-waste in India could touch the 5-lakh ton mark.
It will be catastrophic for the environment. However, not much seems to be
happening to work out a full-scale integrated plan that includes the producers,
the consumers, the junk dealers, the government, and the regulators.
The Indian IT industry, or the IT and telecom hardware industry to be more
specific has its task very clearly cut out. One would expect associations like
MAIT, ELCINA and TEMA to get proactive and take this up as a national priority
and not go slow on this because its members will run into problems because of
unfavorable regulatory policies that could come in soon.
ibrahima@cybermedia.com