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Handset manufacturers have been busy increasing their footprint in the country, while little or no thought has gone toward tackling the issue of increasing e-waste. India boasts of a subscriber base of around 260 mn and the number of handests sold to be around 95.5 mn. And while in most developed countries the legislation forces manufacturers to take full responsibility of their products, this is not the case in India. However, there is a growing concern about rising e-waste in the country, and it is increasingly being felt that manufacturers or enterprises should adopt the cradle-to-grave approach.

In this respect, there are mainly two concepts which are being talked about. Firstly, there is the individual producer responsibility (IPR) where individual producers are responsible for the end-of-life costs of their products. This also assumes importance in the context that it puts pressure on the manufacturers to design products that are less toxic and are easily recyclable.

The second is the extended producer responsibility (EPR), which is designed to promote the integration of environmental costs associated with products throughout their life cycle into the market price of products.

Both IPR and EPR shift the responsibility of the waste from the government to the private industry. Though IPR adopts a proactive approach, encouraging manufacturers to design products that are easier to recycle, EPR advocates inclusion of recycling cost in the price of the product.

Of late the concept of IPR has been propagated as a panacea for e-waste. It certainly offers an edge over EPR since there are very few authorized e-waste recycling facilities currently available in the country. This is also being endorsed by handset manufacturers, with many of them coming out with their own take-back policies.

The authorized e-waste facilities in India capture only 3% of the total e-waste generated; the rest makes its way to informal recycling yards in major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore. This is because businesses sell their discarded IT and other equipment to informal recyclers for quick money without realizing the hazardous implications it has on health and environment, says the report, Take-back Blues, released recently by Greenpeace. The report tries to access the ground realities vis--vis declarations by the manufacturers.

Take-back Report Card
In India, the concept of take-back is yet to catch up, with most companies just offering a token take-back service. Though this is not the case with global brands that are supposed to offer take-back service in the rest of the world. For instance, LG, which offers take-back service in the rest of the world, has only five-to-seven centers in the country and even these do not function properly.

We do have a take-back policy, but as of now it is not functioning properly. We are on the verge of finalizing a new policy, according to which we would have around twenty collection centers in the country. We would also tie-up with one of the authorized recyclers. The collected gadgets would be sent to the recycler. We are also planning to have a dedicated call center, which would help customers inquire about our take-back policy, says Raju Kalra, head, Energy, Environment, Health & Safety Department, LG. The company as of now offers take-back only for mobile products.

Nokia offers take-back around the world and was the first to offer the service in India. It has recently increased its collection centers in India from ten (in the metros) to around 600 in the country. The company was penalized twice by Greenpeace because it had the take-back policy globally but not for India.

Nokias environmental work is based on life cycle thinking. This means that we aim to minimize the environmental impact of our products throughout our operations, beginning with the extraction of raw materials and ending with recycling, treatment of waste, and recovery of used materials. In India, we have installed take-back bins in 600 centers, and plan to extend this to a similar number of priority dealers shortly. We are also training care center and customer helpline staff on recycling services, and have recently provided more local information on our website to help people find out where to bring back their phones, says Ambrish Bakaya, director, Corporate Affairs, Nokia India. Nokia sends the returned handsets to a recycling plant in Singapore.

The company has already started educating the dealers and plans to roll out a consumer awareness program to highlight the importance of recycling in the near future.

Motorola is another company that supports producer responsibility and accepts financial management of end-of-life mobile phones. At present, the takeback option is available at location in India which includes five authorised service centers and five motorola office locations, says Ramalingam Saravanam, EHM manager, Motorola India & Bangladesh.

Samsung, on the other hand, doesnt have any take-back policy in the country. This is in total contrast to its policy worldwide. However, the company is planning to have a slew of eco-friendly products. We have launched two green mobile phones which do not have BFR and PVC chemicals, according to ROHS compliance. In the second half of the year, we are also planning to introduce a bio-cover mobile phone using vegetable plastic material to prevent pollution, says Sunil Dutt, country head, Samsung Telecommunications India.

Experts believe that it is imperative for companies to take-back their products. This would inspire them to come out with environment-friendly products.

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