Carlin Carr, Bangalore Community Manager
Nearly everyone in India has a mobile phone these days. Rickshaw drivers slow their engines to answer calls en route. Streetside fruit sellers take orders with their mobiles. And women picking up trash in the road use their mobiles to keep tabs on their children. Yet the growing availability of new technologies raises concerns for environmentalists, who warn that e-waste can be extremely hazardous if not dealt with properly. A Times of India article says that old computers and electronics can lead to public health issues such as mercury poisoning or a possible stroke if they are simply dumped and left to pile up. Hazardous e-waste is part of a larger issue in urban India about the lack of waste management services — especially for hazardous industries including biomedical companies, oil refineries and chemical industries — leading to serious environmental and health issues.
What’s more concerning is that not all of the hazardous waste each year is not all being generated domestically. Although there are laws that ban other countries from depositing their hazardous materials in India, loopholes in the system have perpetuated the exploitative practice. The passing on of the problem happens internally as well. Villagers around Bangalore, which produces 64,379 million tonnes of hazardous waste each year from 1,702 industries, complain that they are suffering from Bangalore’s waste being dumped on their lands. “It is well known that villages around Bangalore have become victim to the massive and largely illegal dumping of about 5,000 tonnes of solid waste generated daily in the city… Several villagers have died as a direct consequence of such dumping of toxic waste, and many more are suffering a wide range of infectious and chronic illnesses,” says a press release from the Environmental Support Group Trust.
The group’s proposal says that landfills are not the way forward. The only solution is segregation of waste at source. While this is true — and has been mandated in Bangalore since last year — hazardous waste requires a more comprehensive plan. In 2008, the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) implemented the Hazardous Wastes (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules 2008, but many of the rules are not being followed. For example, a DNA article uncovered that while Bangalore generates about 300 barrels (of 50 kl capacity each) of waste oil a day, “50% of this used oil does not reach the refineries for recycling but is siphoned off to small garages and mechanic shops.” A report from the Pollution Board said that the main reasons industries are not complying is cost.
Earlier this year, the KSPCB launched a new initiative: door-to-door collection of hazardous materials at individual industrial units in one area of Bangalore. Two agencies have been appointed by the board to collect hazardous materials from about 500 units and process them outside the city in a designated center. The KSPCB chairman stated that “the closed loop system will help the industries segregate and dispose of hazardous wastes in a systematic manner which will also help in tapping the unregistered industries. Most of the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are operating in small sheds without enough space to store hazardous wastes.”
The initiative is a good first step, especially the digital documentation that has been implemented as part of the program to better track the hazardous industries and their legality. More awareness around recycling hazardous materials and even e-waste on a household level needs to take place in the city. Comprehensive waste management is one of the most pressing issues in Bangalore and most Indian cities. Without a plan to deal with this new generation of trash, the modern Indian city will turn into a toxic trash dump, choking its residents on its own waste.
Photo credit: Rolling Okie