Bangalore: The green statement has been luring a lot of startup to get a pie in the market. The computing devices, electronic garbage that piles up in every company or even in homes, have always been a source of the quick cash and currently only five percent of it gets recycled in an organized way. In such a scenario, how would a company venturing into the realm bring in a better return on investment? Sachin Maheshwari, who has recently joined the boards of Zephyr Peacock as its Director quickly pinpoints, "The cost of the amount of recycled goods that comes out of a product covers all the recycling cost. Whether it's metal or gold, the open market has a good price for it." During his stints in Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Sachin himself was a part of one of the recycling startups.

There are 58 million television units in India currently that will reach 234 million by 2015. By the end of 2010 there will be around 75 million computers in India from 15 million now since the life cycle of a PC has come down to 3-4 years from 7-8 years a few years back. Similarly, the Indian mobile handset market is set to zoom across the 100 million mark soon. E-waste management firms claim that now it is possible to recycle around 98 percent of a cellphone. If a general consensus on organized e-waste recycling is achieved then there is no looking back for any firm in this sector.

The main issue is the awareness and the urge to socially come to a conclusion. "One is paid for giving out the garbage to an unorganized recycler. Even if being socially conscious about pollution is kept on the sidelines for a minute, there are also issues on security. For instance, recently, many of the U.S. companies' crucial data were found openly on an online site of Nigeria. This happens as there is no track of the products once it reaches the unorganized scrap dealers' hands. Herein, the work of the organized recycling companies comes. We, for instance, use a specific technology to re-format the hard-disks to ensure no data can be retrieved from the product. Also the hazardous bi-products are disposed safely," says Rohan Gupta, Co-founder of Attero Recycling. It serves more than 200 clients which include Wipro, HCL, Tata Tele Services, and Google among others. To some extent even electronic manufacturing firms have started taking a notice of the re-usability part. For instance, Nokia claims that 65-80 percent of the materials in their mobile phones can now be recycled and given a second life. Best practices can even recover 100 percent of the materials - partly as energy. The market is huge, yet till a complete agreement from every nook of the society comes it may not grow big.