Page 20 from: September 2013

20 September 2013

The past and present of India’s massive informal e-scrap industry is located in the
east of Delhi, in a winding set of canyon-like

streets and alleys known as Old Seelampur. All

day and all night, delivery trucks arrive with

stacks of monitors, laptops and desktops, sup-

plying hundreds of narrow store-fronts stacked

with used hard drives, picture tubes and circuit

boards, with workers labouring over them.

Some dismantle and some repair; others pack,

and still others market the goods in one-on-one

negotiations that take place in doorways, the

middle of streets and over tea in the handful

of cafés that dot the district. By most accounts,

this is the largest e-scrap market in India.

The future, however, is uncertain for Old Seela-

mpur and for the smaller markets like it across

India.

On May 1 2012, India’s first e-scrap recycling law

came into effect, and with it began a concerted

effort by large recyclers, NGOs and local govern-

ment to incorporate – if not co-opt – India’s vast

‘informal’ e-scrap trade into a technologically and

environmentally-advanced e-scrap repair, refur-

bishment and recycling industry. The need is

pressing: Indians are joining the global middle

class at a quickening pace, buying new gadgets

and offloading old ones. No reliable statistics exist

for the volume of e-scrap in India, and even gov-

ernment estimates are conflicting. Anecdotes,

company info, local government data and experi-

ence provide the best estimates. And on one point

everyone agrees: domestic supply is growing.

Priti Mahesh, a senior programme manager with

Toxics Link, an environmental NGO with more

than a decade of experience working on e-scrap

issues, says that upwards of 60% of the e-scrap

processed or repaired in India today is generated

within the country. The imported e-scrap that

once fed places like Old Seelampur is unquestion-

ably a shrinking percentage of the overall trade.

A profitable industry
The challenge of transforming India’s informal

recycling sector into a modern, formalised

tough e-scrap
challenge

E l E c t r o n i c s r E c y c l i n g By Adam Minter

India’s

Over the decades, India’s informal

electronics recycling sector has devel-

oped into an efficient and profitable

industry that employs hundreds of thou-

sands of workers in cities up and down the sub-conti-

nent; however, it is also unhealthy and unsafe. Transformation

into a modern, formalised sector is necessary – but it will not

be easy. On the plus side, several promising efforts are under way

in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, boosted by India’s growing

demand for raw materials.

p20_E-scrap in India.indd 20 03-09-13 09:38