E-waste disposal relies heavily on drives by KSPCB, NGOs as BBMP snoozes

NT Correspondent
Bengaluru:

Increasing population, urbanisation, advancement in innovation and technology ---all have led to huge amounts of e-waste in the city. Schools and colleges are also responsible for generating a large quantity of e-waste like desktops, microphones, batteries and printers.

But Karnataka’s waste management policy doesn’t address ewaste disposal as it relies heavily on collection drives and e-bins set up by NGOs in the city. “We get new systems every ten years or so. For old systems and other things like projectors and printers, we give it to NGOs or other vendors,” said the admin office of RV College of Engineering.

Another engineering college in the city, Bangalore Institute of Technology, said, “Every two years, we would take things that are not working and give them to NGOs collecting e-waste.”

“Many students and college authorities are not aware of the harms of ewaste. The government too doesn’t take big steps to create awareness regarding e-waste, and hence there is no proper disposal,” said an environmentalist, Sandeep Anirudhan.

The Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) said they don’t have exact official data on the amount of e-waste produced in the city. But they plan on installing new waste bins across the city. NGOs around the city also allege that the pollution control board doesn’t do much for the proper disposal of waste.

“The Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) has only been supportive in terms of granting permits for installing disposal boxes around the city, but apart from that there is no initiative from their side,” said Ankita Kunwar, project manager at Saahas NGO.

The NGO collects about four tonnes of e-waste through collection drives, drop boxes, and pick-up drives in a month, added Kunwar. After collecting, the waste is sent to a place where the government authorized recyclers to collect it for further segregation.

“We have installed around 40 disposal boxes in the city. They are cleared out after 30–45 days, and apart from e-bins, we also have collection drives and pick-up services. We would go to schools and colleges to collect e-waste,” said Kunwar