New Delhi: The ministry of environment, forest and climate change recently redesignated the electronic waste disposal business as a red-category industry. According to the ministry, red-category industries pose the biggest threat to the environment because they generate the highest pollution load in the sector.
This re-categorisation, however, has not stopped the illegal e-waste disposal sites in Delhi from operating without licenses or proper protection. TOI visited two such sites in Seelampur and Shastri Park and the conditions at both locations were appalling. In Seelampur, for example, tonnes of discarded electronics are manually dismantled each day. Not only does the extraction process here pose a health risk to the workers and the environment, but no safety measures are taken while disposing of the e-waste either.
The waste was handled on open grounds and broken down manually to extract recyclable metals to be resold, leaving both the workers and soil exposed to toxic materials like lead, cadmium, mercury and the acid fumes generated in the process. According to experts, prolonged exposure to these can cause nausea, irritability, headaches, and liver and kidney problems in the long run.
"There is no disposal system at these places, and the waste is eventually dumped into the Yamuna," said PiyushMohapatra of Toxics Link, an environmental NGO. With the business being slotted in the red category and with new rules to be implemented soon, Mohapatra hopes that the safer, formal e-waste processing sector will begin to dominate.
Child labourers are a common sight at the illegal extraction sites. A report released by Assocham-Frost & Sullivan on World Earth Day pointed out that five lakh children between the ages of 10 and 14 were engaged in e-waste processing activities.
Discarded electronic items are procured illegally through unofficial channels by these operators since they aren't authorised to collect or dispose of e-waste. "The waste comes from distance places, even from outside Delhi," admitted a labourer who did not wished to be named. "We have been trying to get a licence for long time, but with that not happening we get e-garbage from local dumps too."
These labourers also claim the Delhi Pollution Control Committee knows about their existence. "We tried getting a licence from them but were told to acquire land first," the labourer added. "Since it is difficult for many of us to set things up properly, we continue on a small scale like this."
