Invest in E-Waste

India, rapidly becoming a global center for Information & Communication Technology, it inevitably uses more electronic items and inevitably produces more E-Waste.
Around 400000 tons of E-Waste generated in 2008. A large amount of E-Waste is dumped into rivers, landfills and sewage drains. Only small amount of E-Waste is recycled by organized sector.
According to MAIT, it is projected to grow to more than 800000 tons by 2012, with the growth rate of 15%. It is likely to grow even more as most electronic goods like televisions, mobile phones etc., are experiencing high growth rates and even faster replacement cycles as consumers outgrow older models due to rapid technological obsolescence in this sector.
Despite such high generation level of e-waste, participation of organized players in e-waste recycling is insignificant. Less than 5% of the e-waste is recycled through registered (Organized) recyclers. Over 95% of the e-waste is segregated, dismantled and recycled in the unorganized sector based in urban slums around Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai. The reason why the unorganized sector still dominates is that there are too few registered recyclers.
Currently, around 6 players like Ecoreco, E-Parisara, Ash Recyclers, K G Nandini and few are operational in the organized sector.
“Fifty recyclers is the minimum required to handle the current volumes. And, we need to add ten new ones every year” B K Soni, Ecoreco said in 1 of his articles.
Last but not the least; E-Waste is 1 among the 16 hot sectors quoted by “Entrepreneur magazine” (September ’09 issue).