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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

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