Lethal Waste

Thirteen-year-old Rehman does not go to school. He sits in the compound of a
high-walled factory in Mandoli, in north-west Delhi, where he along with his
mother and elder sister dip circuit boards in and out of a plastic drum filled
with acid. He looks up piteously at his employer, Alok Maheswar, as he strips
the board of its last remnants of copper and traces of silver. It has been two
years since Rehman's family shifted from an insignificant village in UP to the
industrial area of Mandoli, where he has been working since along with his
mother and sister. He is not the only youngster there; there are a dozen more
adolescents keeping him company, without masks to save them from the pernicious
fumes.

Rehman is a byproduct of our times, a byproduct of the growing power of the
Brand. He and the environment he unwillingly pollutes live and die by the
consumer's purchasing power and aspiration, which the electronics companies
are propelling by driving their brandwagons deeper into India's shantytowns.
Brands change globally, but buying attitudes rarely do. Surveys have shown that
spur-of-the-moment decisions are increasingly being driven by an additional
feature which the buyer spots somewhere in a device, and which seem to him to
fulfill his aspirations, while the rest is left to his intuition and product
knowledge. Advertising will continue to get more attractive and consumer
aspiration will strive to match up, leading to quicker

e-obsolescence.

India's electronics version of the green revolution is still a foetus
struggling to choose a suitable birthday. While the prices of electronic devices
are in a perpetual state of see-saw, and multitudes of brands jostle for space
in the consumer's consciousness, the question of management is slowly rearing
its beautiful head. "Management" does not here relate wholly to
achieving unit sales targets, but also to coming to grips with the megatons of
electronic detritus sleeping inside the landfills sprouting in major cities and
towns, the ecological timebombs they house.

That's right, mess around with nature, and you mess around with yourself.
India now teeters on the brink of achieving "environmental
e-wasteland" status. Talk of recycling using sophisticated technology is
in, at least on the elite seminar circuit, as environmental bodies, corporates,
and the government, strictly in that order, are slowly raising their eco
pitches. There is an upside to this: visions of the mountains of e-waste
subsumed inside landfills dotting the peripheries of India's major cities and
towns are slowly entering the public conscience.

The technology revolution and the consumerist frenzy that feeds it are now
bringing up demands for constant upgradation. The snazziest of cellphones will
not guarantee true happiness in life, but the successful business plans and
model designs of the electronics industry will continue to be driven by the
union of style statement with the hottest technology off the block: anything to
get you that temporary edge over the competition. And at the end of every sales
cycle, very few are cleaning up their backyards and junkyards. The Silicon
Valley Toxics Coalition estimates that, by 2005, 130 mn cellphones will be
discarded annually, forming part of the 40 million pounds of e-waste generated
worldwide.

Everybody knows that, in India at least, online word-of-mouth discussions and
conversations are yet to get to a position from which to give direction or shape
to industrial or political issues. The Web rarely fuels activism into the
mainstream, if you don't count the odd chain mail (see box story on
semi-conductor fabs for India) "exposing" the inadequacies of our
socio-economic fundamentals as measured against the realities of running a chip
fab out of India. But what about managing the existing wasteware, the discarded
PC monitors, PCBs, PCWs, cellphones and televisions, after obsolescence sets in
every two years or thereabouts?

The result: tons of e-waste lie stashed away within the fortress-like walls
of recycling units. Work on extracting metal from waste is kept up around the
week, over 12-14 hours a day. Workers squat as they work with bare hands,
cleaning, crushing or heating electronic scrap. The badly ventilated units
engaged in e-waste "processing" are small, unregistered labor shops.

Dark Side of the Digital Noon

These days, not even the most careless of manufacturers and consumers would
dare call e-waste bashers fashionable Luddites. It's clear even to them that
the will to evolve a consistent e-waste management policy is lacking on the
government and corporate fronts. However, a few manufacturers and IT services
companies are slowly stepping up their clean-up act to tackle e-waste-plastic,
steel castings, circuit boards, glass tubes, wires, resistors, capacitors and
other assorted parts and materials.

The "3Rs" mantra is slowly sinking in as companies try hard to
shake off some good old Indian inertia and chant "Reduce, Recycle,
Reuse...". More and more Indian corporates are moving onto SHE (Safety,
Health and Environment) reporting. ISO 14000 insists on environment
friendliness, and many Indian exporters are getting into certification, WeP
Peripherals be a notable example.

While the IT companies are playing catch-up, civic negligence is adding to
the woes. Delhi leads the bratpack. As per statistics from Delhi-based Toxics
Link, over 1,050 tons of electronic scrap is being produced by manufacturers and
assemblers annually in India-that is $1.5 bn worth of e-waste. The average
computer and television set holds, apart from complex plastic blends that are
either difficult to recycle or non-degradable, valuable components like gold and
platinum, aluminium, cadmium, mercury, lead and brominated flame-retardants. The
kabadiwalas simply burn the entire package, point out environmental experts like
Wilma Rodrigues of environmental NGO Saahas. The question of fixing
responsibility on who is supposed to handle e-waste is far from the minds of
civic agencies, with the roles of the municipality and the producers are yet to
be defined. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and industry majors
producing electronic goods are yet to sit down and evolve a comprehensive
gameplan.

In Delhi's wake, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad are post-graduating into
major unauthorized recycling zones. Much of the e-waste is tucked away in huge
landfills in the austere outskirts of these cities or burned in the open.
"E-waste is a problem that is growing, especially in tech-heavy Bangalore,
and we expect it to assume ominous proportions in the next three years. The main
points of threat arise from the highly unprofessional methods used in the
disposal of primary e-waste components-cables, batteries and PCBs-by a
highly unorganized scrap dealer establishment," notes P Bineesha, chief
environmental advisor of the HAWA (Hazardous Waste Action) Project initiated by
the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) under the guidance of German
Technical Co-operation (GTZ).

Bangalore generates around 3,000 tons of waste every day and only 30% of this
is disposed the right way, say waste management experts. In the absence of a
scientific landfill in the city, almost 50% of the waste generated in the city
is dumped on the outskirts of the city, where it is ultimately burnt. Even as
the city battles erratic collection and clumsy disposal of solid municipal
waste, e-waste presents a fresh challenge. According to Rodrigues, "Every
month, Bangalore alone throws away 400,000 dry cell batteries and 80,000
tubelights. Hazardous waste of this kind is slated to increase
tremendously."

RPO (Rubbish Process Outsourcing)

All said and done, the cost of recycling e-waste in developed nations is far
higher than the costs of sending it for recycling into developing countries,
where cheap manual labor is available, and illegal migrant laborers and their
children wait to dirty their hands. Where the recycling cost of a unit of
computer scrap is $20 in the US, it would not exceed $2 if done in India,
Pakistan, China or Bangladesh.

Importers are aware of legislative loopholes in India and routinely help
bypass computer imports across customs under the guise of old working PCs, which
then find their way into the hands of scrap dealers. The dealers decide whether
the computer can be reused or scrapped. The scrapped units find their way into
those cramped industrial enclosures where vulnerable and ill-paid laborers work
far into the night.

Computer recycling takes place at all the major commercial hubs in India-ports,
the major cities New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and their peripheries.
50-80% of US e-waste is regularly exported to India, China and Pakistan where
workers process them in unprotected environments. However, unorganised recycling
and backyard scrap-trading forms close to 100% of total e-waste processing
activity. Not to mention the standard practice of throwing out the baby with the
bathwater: through "bonfire parties". Many of India's municipal
corporations burn e-waste like PC monitors, PCBs, CDs, cable and toner
cartridges, besides the common light bulb and tubelights, in the open along with
the garbage, releasing high amounts of mercury and lead emissions.

At the kabadiwala's end, the heavy metal in the discarded scrap is
extracted by traders or their agents, using highly unprofessional techniques,
while the residue is indiscriminately dumped in landfills, forming leachate. The
contamination of ground water from landfill leachate could assume alarming
proportions very soon, say experts. While the WHO recommends a maximum of 1-4
pg/kg of Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) of dioxins and related compounds per
person from the surrounding air, the figure is 4-6 pg/kg in cities like Delhi,
Mumbai and Bangalore, say environment experts. While the WHO pegs TDI for lead
at 0-50 ug/kg, the values for larger Indian metros far exceed this figure.

The ideal answer to the problem of scrap disposal by small traders should
emerge from and address two forces: legislation and the market. Legislation
varies across different states, enabling recycling agents to shift operations to
states with liberal waste disposal rules when the going gets tough elsewhere. We
are, as yet, a long way away from uniformity in legislation across states, say
corporates and environmentalists like Bineesha and Rodrigues.

The market for e-waste processing, on the other hand, will revolve around
corporate and civic recycling programmes involving recyclers and recovery units.
In the industrial areas of Delhi-Mandoli, Seelampur and Turkmaan Gate-doctors
stand witness to the damage e-waste laborers face to their kidneys, nervous
system, brain, heart and liver, with negligent exposure also impeding neural
development among some children. New dangers lie in the mercury in relays,
switches and PCBs, which can cause chronic respiratory damage and skin disorders
through being passed up the food-chain, e.g., due to bioaccumulation in fishes.
The beryllium used in motherboards is particularly carcinogenic and causes a
variety of skin diseases. Workers inhaling fumes and dust are known to suffer
from chronic beryllium disease or beryllicosis.

Opportunity in Chaos

Switzerland-based environmental research firm EMPA says the recycling and
recovery market worldwide saw a turnover of $51 mn in fiscal 2003-04, and is
expected to touch $147 mn by fiscal 2010. "The business opportunity in
processing e-waste lies in the recovery of valuable heavy metal from used
electronic devices," says Rolf Widmer, project manager with EMPA. Just a
single ton of PCB can yield $2000 worth of heavy metal extract, Widmer says.

But then, cleaning up is always a question of balancing factory-floor skills
against technology and capital, which India is not too efficient at. Industry
observers wonder how government pollution control agencies like CPCB will go
about actual prevention and punitive action against careless dumping of residues
once the kabadiwalas dismantle the valuable ingredients for reuse or recycling.

Recycling older PCs is a costly proposition for companies. It can cost them
between $85 and $136 apiece, even if they manage to sell off some gear,
according to the findings of a study released last year by Gartner.
Hewlett-Packard's e-waste target, set in April this year, has the goal of
recycling one billion pounds of electronic products and printing supplies by
2007, almost twice the total electronic waste the PC maker has put into the
reclaiming machine since 1987. HP print cartridges sold in the US and Europe go
with postage-paid labels and envelopes inserted to create awareness. Consumers
are encouraged to return and recycle used or unwanted electronic equipment in an
environmentally-friendly manner.

And what happens when legislative ground on e-waste does not exist beneath a
company's feet? Cut to India. The Indian operations of both HP and IBM are
known to hold their e-waste for long periods inside the bowels of their godowns,
hamstrung as they are by the absence of any authorized recycler in India. Here,
recycling lags behind in ideas. The lack of widespread technical know-how could
actually help draft recycling legislation. While CPCB has stepped up its
campaign in the South against those dumping e-waste in lake beds, the traders
are rarely punished. Why? Simply because there is no license to revoke and no
legislation to push a case, says Dr DC Sharma, CPCB's zonal officer for the
southern region.

"The end consumer must stop thinking of used electronics as junk. They
should donate them to students or non-profit organizations," says Infosys
director Dinesh. "Consumers should urge manufacturers to accept used
electronics products and recycle them like firms in the US and Europe are doing.
Companies should work with civic organizations and like-minded NGOs to recycle
e-waste and keep it out of landfills."

All this seems years away. But companies like Infosys Technologies and WeP
Peripherals have earned a head start over the rest. Infosys has over the years
initiated its Ozone e-waste management scheme to spread awareness on electronic
waste disposal among its 25,000-plus workforce. The company donates its used PCs
every two years to schools. Bins placed all over the Infosys campus in Bangalore
store damaged floppies, which are shredded, segregated and recycled in
co-ordination with the Dhanraj-Ballal Hockey Academy. Separate collection bins
are used to collect used battery cells. A key member of the erstwhile Bangalore
Agenda Task Force, a civic thinktank with high IT representation, Infosys has a
safe disposal target of 20% of e-waste generated by the company by March 31,
2005, says Dinesh.

But Infosys, like the entire industry, sees 30% of its current IT equipment
becoming obsolete every year. So, Bangalore's IT companies are now separating
the "E" word from waste by donating their old computers to police
stations and schools in the vicinity of major tech parks. As for the laggards,
"they should encourage incentives and rewards among employees for adhering
to e-waste disposal rules and promote best practices through active information
dissemination," says Dinesh, advocating a carrot-and-stick approach.

Nebulous Vision

There is still the lack of a clear policy for e-waste processing in India,
though this country has been a party to the Basel Convention, which has banned
import of all hazardous waste. Imports regularly flow in, while a legislation
like The Hazardous Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 1989, was amended in
2000 and 2003. The Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992, that is
still in force and enables imports of second-hand computers. While the Supreme
Court banned e-waste imports in 1997, imports from the developed world are
merrily flowing in.

The rapid obsolescence of computers, combined with limited domestic recycling
infrastructures even in the West contributes to the growing problem of e-waste
exports to developing nations. Three years ago, Robin Ingenthron, president of
the consulting firm American Retrowork Inc, had estimated that 100 shipping
containers of used electronics-roughly 225 tons-were exported weekly from
the US alone.

Because of the underground nature of India's e-waste business, statistics
are scarce. But Toxics Link cites reports indicating that perhaps 30 tons of
computer waste are imported every month into Ahmedabad alone, much of it
contaminated by toxic lead, mercury and cadmium. "It is becoming important
to dispose of e-waste in the optimum time through the optimum way," says
Dinesh. DBS Technologies and SGM Global Technologies are two known names in
e-waste recycling. But their Indian operations are still in consultancy mode.
And, India, which is the hub of unauthorized e-metal extraction, still does not
have a single functional e-waste recycling plant.

The clock ticks on, as fresh repositories of hazardous electronic detritus
build up by the day, seeping into the innards of land, water and air. E-waste,
as everybody is finding out, is more than the sum of its parts.

Ravi Menon in Bangalore and
Jasmine Kaur in New Delhi

e-waste Constituents

• Circuit boards, which contain heavy metals like lead and cadmium
• Computer batteries contain cadmium
• Each computer and television contains on an average 4-8 pounds of lead-about
  20% of the weight of a monitor glass.
• Cathode ray tubes contain lead oxide
• Brominated flame retardants, used on printed circuit boards, cables and
  plastic casing
• Copper cables and plastic computer casings contain PVC
• Refrigerators contain CFCs
• Dry cell, lead acid, carbon-zinc, nickel-metal hydride, zinc chloride,
  zinc-carbon, alkaline, lithium, zinc-cadmium and button cell batteries
  contain heavy metals and mercury
• Mercury is also present in fluorescent and other energy-efficient lamps.
• Discarded electrical equipment or its parts, bulbs, LEDs, iron box,
  geysers, refrigerators, washing machines

Value in a Landfill

• Circuit boards Gold, copper
• Monitors of PCs and TV sets Copper yoke, plastic casing, cathode ray tube
  (intact), glass
• PVC wire Copper or aluminum
• Dry batteries Zinc, carbon powder

Economics of the Scrap Trade

• MS Steel @ Rs 54-94 per kg
• Copper @ Rs 126-174 per kg
• Plastic @ Rs 12-35 per kg
• Outer wire @ Rs 3-18 per kg

Green-up Act

If the millions of used laser toner cartridges in landfills are retrieved, a
bridge can be built from the earth to the moon, a distance of about 223,000
miles. Every year, 275 mn used toner cartridges are disposed of-a weight equal
to the weight of 30,500 adult African elephants. That's just the peripherals
part. Japan, the largest producer of electronic goods, has an Electronic and
Consumer Goods Appliances Act that lays down the law as far as disposal of
e-waste is concerned: the producer is responsible for arranging disposal. In the
US, almost all Fortune 500 companies are working consciously on a green approach
with a timeframe.

Highlights

• Natural resource-intense companies (manufacturing, for example) are
  working on reduction of resources consumed, as well as saving on
  consumption, thus making themselves greener.
• Product companies are launching and promoting more and more green products
  in their portfolio.
• Most of these companies now have a "Green Business Council" to
  offer strategic direction to the company on the green approach.
• Earlier, the stock market used to see "shareholder value", then
  came "shareholder and societal value". Now, it's the age of the
  "triple bottomline": shareholder value, societal value and
  environmental value.
• On the Nasdaq, companies without green programs or approach have 15% of
  their market capitalizations at risk.
• In US, people pay 15% premium on "green electricity"
• The Green Building Council has done a survey and found out that
  "green building or energy-efficient buildings" increase employee
  productivity by 6%.
• Walmart's retail sales increased by 40% on introduction of a green light
  bulb called "DayLight".
• Green buildings have already captured a 4% of the US commercial building
  market in the last three years.

Chokepoints to Green Manufacturing

Financial choke

Remanufacturing is far more expensive than manufacturing. Will need policy
support on taxations to get industry investments

Technology choke

Continuous changes throw up new challenges

Market chain choke

Threats from OEM brands on warranty, legal actions and monopolistic trade
practices

The consumer awareness choke

• Remanufacturing is not re-filling-need for awareness campaigns
• Policy/regulatory choke
• Regulatory framework support can make a sea change in this movement. Safe
  disposal of lead batteries by many corporates is a good example.
• Governments and PSUs, which have few or no e-waste management frameworks
  in place, are among the largest users of IT products

Best Practices

For the CIO

• Buy models that are equipped with extra bays and slots to allow upgrading
• Sign a contract with vendors making them responsible for buy-backs or
  take-backs
• Donate to local schools and institutions
• Advertise "usable" components to other organizations that might
  be interested in them

For Industry

• Standardize the current practices that are currently followed by the
  industry in America and Europe on EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility)
  lines
• Improve product design so as to make products free of toxics and hazardous
  materials
• Envisage "cradle to grave" responsibility for producers
• Tie up with recycling units
• Introduce take-backs and buy-backs, and discounts on exchange offers
• Tie up with local agencies or companies to pick up e-waste materials
• Contract with municipal authorities for e-waste segregation
• Last but not the least, if you see a business opportunity here, start your
  own recycling plant

Why Semiconductor Fabs Aren't Yet in India

While e-waste triggers gross contamination of topsoil and groundwater,
manufacturing processes can stretch ecological resources to the limit. Adding a
new dimension to the e-waste question are these foreboding preconditions for
semiconductor manufacture.

30 to 1 Cost ratio for treating and
discharging city water to ultrapure quality

6.7 mn Gallons of water used per day by a
large semiconductor manufacturing facility for the next generation of
semiconductors

60,000 City population that can be served by
the amount of water used by this next generation facility

2 Number of new natural gas fired power
plants needed to supply the projected annual energy requirements of the
Northwest's semiconductor industry for the next decade

30 Number of days a typical household could
be run from the energy needed to manufacture one semiconductor

50 Percentage of total energy used for HVAC
in a semiconductor manufacturing facility

50 Percentage of energy wasted in the
semiconductor industry

7,500 Number of houses that use the
equivalent amount of power needed for a typical semiconductor fabrication plant

$1,000,000 Typical monthly electric bill for
a large fab

The UPW Angle Water use at semiconductor
manufacturing facilities is intensive. A large amount of water is used to rinse
and clean the semiconductors, and a great deal of this water is UPW (Ultra Pure
Water). In general, 1,400-1,600 gallons of city water is needed to produce 1,000
gallons of UPW. More than 2,000 gallons of UPW can be used in the production of
a single 8-inch wafer. As a point of reference, a typical 200-mm wafer fab
processes 40,000 wafers per month. A large facility can use upto 3 mn gallons of
UPW per day.

How the Dosa Crumbles

Chennai is fast becoming the world's e-waste dumping ground

The stately Ripon Building, a mammoth edifice built in 1913, is today the
headquarters of Chennai Corporation, which takes care of the key civic
infrastructure issues like water, sanitation, garbage disposal among others. But
the efficacy of the Corporation in disposing of the 300 metric tons (MT) of
organic and inorganic waste Chennai city generates everyday is indeed debatable.
This becomes very palpable when you travel a few yards north of Ripon Building
and take a right turn. When you wonder if you are indeed part of a city that
boasts of hi-tech technology parks like Tidel and Mahindra City.

Enter Kannapar Thidal-the burgeoning e-waste processing outfits of Chennai
are right here. Narrow lanes welcome scrap dealers, IT manufacturers or anybody
trying to rake in moolah from scrap. The place, popularly called Moore Market in
bygone days, today wears a ghostly look. After navigating the heavy metal scrap
arranged in rows of shops, the air is thick with the smell of rust and the
cacophony generated by hammers meeting scrap gives the place an eerie feel. A
handful of shops down the street deal with various computer scrap parts. One
shop deals with 486 and 386 machines, while another stocks HDDs, impact printers
and circuit boards.

Leading brands TVSE, Seagate, IBM, are strewn around. A left turn takes you
to where VGA monitors are neatly stacked on a bench, waiting for prospective
buyers. Up ahead looms a CRT pile-up, with more than 50 CRTs dumped beside the
road. An onlooker says, "I have heard explosions during summer, with the
CRTs exploding in the heat. "

It has been a dangerous evolution. Fringe areas like Urapakkam, Puzhal and
MEPZ are becoming dumping yards for companies. Units housed in MEPZ deal with
imported e-waste. More specialized centers are landing grounds for imported
e-waste.

Chennai's advantage of having a port makes it easy for the world to dump
its electronic refuse here, unmindful of the health and environmental hazards to
the local population. A recent Toxics Link report noted that Chennai is fast
becoming India's leading e-waste hub.

Shrikanth G in
Chennai