Introduction

Electronic waste comprises of discarded and unused equipments and components of electrical and electronic goods such as computers, television, refrigerator, cell phones and other house hold appliances. The growth rate of the IT and electronics industry in India is increasing every year (MAIT, 2007). This has in turn led to the increased consumption of electronic items and computer hardware. Initially this development was confined to only large metropolitan cities and the tier I cites. As the metropolitan and tier 1 cities are reaching their threshold capacity in almost all resources,  the big players in Information technology and electronic industries are turning up to tier II cities such as Gurgoan, Jaipur, Indore, Mohali, Mysore, Mangalore, etc. (The economic times, 2006). This has immensely contributed towards the increased consumption of Electronic appliances in these tier II cities. This paper attempts to quantify Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) in tier II cities by taking the example of one such tier II city, Mangalore, as well as to present a policy for the management of generated WEEE. The estimations world wide showed that WEEE mainly comprises of large house hold electronic equipment such as  televisions, PCs, Refrigerators, Cell phones and Washing machines. (Wilkinson et al. 2001; Crowe et al. 2003; Darby and Obara 2004; Liu et al. 2005; Widmer et al. 2005, John and Laurence 2006; Kang and Schoenung 2006; Lee et al. 2007). So an assumption was made that, the WEEE generated in a developing city like Mangalore will also comprise of PCs, Televisions, Refrigerators, Cell phones and Washing machines. The study area was limited to city boundaries of Mangalore. Market supply methods and the estimate method are used to quantify the generation of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment in the city of Mangalore. A management policy based on producer responsibility and recycling is proposed. assumption was made that, the WEEE generated in a developing city like Mangalore will also comprise of PCs, Televisions, Refrigerators, Cell phones and Washing machines. The study area was limited to city boundaries of Mangalore. Market supply methods and the estimate method are used to quantify the generation of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment in the city of Mangalore. A management policy based on producer responsibility and recycling is proposed. 

METHODOLOGY 

Estimations are carried out by using market supply methods and estimate method. Average weight and life span of different equipment required for the estimations of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment are shown in Table1. Average life span was assumed based on the responses of consumers Mangalore, where as average weight was obtained from the previous studies carried out by Toxics link (Toxics link, 2007)

 Market Supply Method 

WEEE risings are extrapolated based on sales data statistics and the average life span. The method assumes that equipment sold in a particular year will turn out as waste equipment after completion of its useful life time. The other assumption is that there is negligible change in the variance of the average life span of electronic equipment (Wilkinson et al. 2001)

Market Supply A Method  

This method is same as market supply method in extrapolations but for the average life span. The difference is the variance in average life span as the market supply A method assumes that there is a considerable variance in life span of electronic equipment. This variance occurs as a distribution around the average life span. The distribution of the variance is obtained by the survey of the consumers (Wilkinson et al. 2001). The estimation of  WEEE using market supply.