Attero ready to ‘fill the gap’ in India’s e-cycling

India – The ever-rising popularity of electronics means volumes of e-scrap in India can be expected to reach 1.72 million tonnes by 2020, according to TechinAsia. But with domestic e-cycling remaining largely unorganised, Indian firm Attero Recycling has taken it upon itself to ‘fill that gap’.

A start-up business based in Roorkee, Attero′s ′end-to-end′ recycling approach has received funding totalling more than US$ 16.5 million to date. Currently, the company processes over a million pounds of e-scrap collected from 500 Indian cities across 25 states per month. Helped by this financial support, founder and ceo Nitin Gupta plans to set up more ′state-of-the-art′ waste treatment plants and expand both its client base and operations to other countries.

′Attero has been working to formalise the informal sector, which handles a major portion of e-waste in India,′ Gupta comments. ′The aim is to train informal sector workers and establish a last-mile e-waste collection channel, which will divert e-waste to the formal sector for responsible recycling.′

The businessman points out that roughly 70% of e-scrap in India is imported. Recent data from the United Nations Environment Programme suggests that the number of television sets and computers in India will increase by a factor of five over the period from 2007 to 2020, and by 18 times in the case of mobile phones.

Meanwhile, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the USA (NASA) has described Attero as a ′waste innovator′ and gave it a spot in its Launch: Beyond Waste initiative in 2012.

For more information, visit: www.attero.in