Regulating the management of unwanted mobile phones, computers, MP3 players and televisions and other waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE, also referred to as e-waste) in India is at last being addressed. Faced, to some extent, with the same challenges addressed almost a decade ago at the European Union through the WEEE Directive, on 30th March 2010 the Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) put out for consultation the Draft  E-Waste (Management & Handling) Rules 2010 (Draft Rules).

The current e-waste crisis in India has developed from a number of significant factors which together pose  some familiar and some unfamiliar  problems to those faced by western societies. First, the volume of e-waste, also referred to as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) generated domestically is rising at an as yet uncalculated amount. These products and their components contain hazardous metals and toxic substances capable of both significant harm to human health and the environment.  However, and perhaps of more concern, is the volume of e-waste arriving  often in violation of international law by container from the EU, North America, Australia and Japan into the ports of Mumbai and Ahmedabad. Second, much of  this e-waste is exported under the guise of equipment for reuse only to reach unregulated Indian scrap yards in places such as Meerut, Chennai and Bangalore where unauthorised recovery of precious metals and components is carried out informally by tens of thousands of men, women and children. This so-called informal sector uses rudimentary  techniques such as acid leaching,  open air burning and manual stripping of wires to extract the resources from WEEE. These activities are mostly conducted without any safety equipment or control and have significant implications for human health and the environment. Third,  up until recently policymakers have shown little interest in introducing legislation for the management of ewaste. As a result,  there is currently no separate collection, treatment and disposal  infrastructure for  e-waste in India and  no  reliable data on the quantity of e-waste generated and disposed of each year. Lastly, the lack of regulation of WEEE in India enables global producers of electrical and electronic products to abandon the extended producer responsibility obligations imposed upon them in other countries such as the European Union. The regulation of e-waste in the EU is established through the WEEE Directive (2002/98/EC amended by 2003/108/EC). This directive places responsibility on the producers of electrical and electronic products to finance the collection, transport, treatment and ultimate disposal of e-waste according to their market share. By internalising the costs associated with these products throughout their lifecycle, the intention of the Directive is to promote patterns of sustainable production and consumption.

In India, the Hazardous Waste (Management & Trans boundary Movement) Rules 2008 makes a reference to  e-waste and its constituent elements and the MoEF’s Report of the Committee to Evolve Road Map on Management of Wastes in India in March 2008 included the publication of voluntary guidelines for e-waste management in India. However, these are not legally binding in nature. Together, these measures do not tackle the challenges posed by the e-waste problem. The  Draft  E-Waste (Management & Handling) Rules 2010 (hereafter, the Draft Rules) is the first piece ofproposed legislation to expressly seek to regulate and control the management of ewaste in India.The primary focus of the Draft Rules is to enable the reuse, recycling and recovery of e-waste and prevent inappropriate disposal of unwanted electrical and electronic items and their component parts. Categories of e-waste  to be regulated  under the Draft Rules include: large and small household appliances; toys, leisure and sports equipment; electrical and electronic tools, medical devices; monitoring and control equipment; IT and telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics.

Furthermore, the Draft Bill refers to the reduction in the use of hazardous substances (RoHS) in the manufacture of EEE.  The Draft Bill provides threshold limits for the use of certain hazardous substances to be complied with within three years from the date of commencement of the Rules by the producer of EEE such as lead, cadmium, cadmium oxide, mercury, antimony trioxide, beryllium metal and liquid crystal. Responsibilities - Key Actors The Draft Rules establish responsibilities  on  producers, dealers, refurbishers, collection centres,  recyclers and  consumers.  The producer will be responsible for collecting e-waste generated both during the manufacture of  EEE and at the point of disposal. In this way, the Draft Rules reflect the principle of EPR as adopted in the EU WEEE Directive by making producers responsible for the products they manufacture during its entire life including the point at which the product is no longer wanted or needed. In order to achieve this the Draft Rules set out that producers will be responsible for financing and organising a system, either individually or collectively, for the collection, transport and environmentally sound treatment of their own products. Part of the duty includes that they must ensure that all e-waste is sent to either  a registered refurbisher, dismantler or recycler. The effectiveness of these systems will be reliant on consumer awareness and this is addressed in part by providing an obligation on producers to raise awareness of the  impacts associated with inappropriate disposal of e-waste and the return/collection schemes in operation to dispose of e-waste suitably, Responsibilities have also been attributed to dealers in the Draft Bill. Dealers are those who sell to and receive from consumers EEE or components of EEE, referred to in the WEEE Directive as distributors or retailers. They are required to “provide a box, bin or demarcated area” to deposit e-waste collected from consumers and must submit details to the producer or authorised collection centre of the e-waste collected.

Those repairing EEE, known as refurbishers, have a duty to ensure that any e-waste produced through the refurbishment of products and equipment are separately collected and transported in a safe manner to registered recyclers or authorised collection centres. The collection centres, whether operated individually by a producer or collectively must be authorised by the State Pollution Control Board and must ensure that no damage is caused to the environment by establishing secure storage for e-waste prior to it being transported either to the producer, refurbisher, registered dismantler or recycler. Every dismantler and recycler of  e-waste must register with the Central Pollution Control Board and is required  to ensure that the facility and processes used in dismantling or recycling do not have a detrimental affect on human health or the environment and comply with relevant standards and guideline laid down by the Central Pollution Control Board. They should also  make available all records for inspection by the concerned authorities.