Have you ever wondered where the old computer you sold last year or the video game you threw in the dustbin went? Only 19,000 tonnes of an approximate 333,000 tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) generated in the country in 2007 was disposed off or recycled by the organised players in the nascent e-waste management sector. The rest is assumed to have reached kabadiwallas.
There are five organised companies in the fray, all of them SMEs, gearing up to the challenge of offering sustainable solutions for managing e-waste.
Technological developments make electronic items redundant quickly, forcing the consumer to purchase a latest offering. India is estimated to have four million cell phones, eight million personal computers, 80 million television sets and ten million DVD players. All of them will be obsolete in a few years. According to estimates, the 3.33 lakh tonnes of waste generated in 2007 is expected to grow to 10 lakh tonnes by 2011. “The challenge for companies is in creating the awareness among individuals and corporates alike and impressing upon them the advantages which we offer,” says Nitin Gupta, co-founder and CEO of the Noida based start-up Attero Recycling which was incorporated last year. Attero means waste in Latin. The company was successful in attracting series A funding of $6.3 million (approx Rs 25 crore) from venture capital firms NEA-IndoUS Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2008, which will be used to establish a state of the art e-waste recycling facility in Roorkee, Uttarakhand. “Customers will not be charged for collection of junk electronic items located across the country,” says Gupta, who quit a well paying job to start the company after finding out that there are no organised companies facilitating the disposal of his computer.
Similarly, B K Soni, chairman of Mumbai-based Infotrek Syscom, faced a unique problem when he was replacing computer systems for corporate clients in 2000. “What do I do with the old computers? Initially, we started off with refurbishing the systems but there was not much of a market there,” says Soni, who went on a tour to find out what the developed world is doing about e-waste.
The e-waste vertical was started in 2005 and today, it has become the flagship business for the listed company which has registered a turnover of Rs 25-30 crore for the last two financial years. A bigger plant under construction right now will go operational later this year and is expected to push the turnover of the company.
On the statutory front, Soni says that though the government has put in place guidelines for e-waste management, a legislation needs to be introduced, which will require companies to handle e-waste properly. “As of now, it is not binding on an individual to dispose of his e-waste in the proper way. A legislation would be far better,” he says, asserting that all the promoters of companies are getting together to form a forum to “get their voices heard” in the corridors of power.
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