The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

India's wave of e-waste

Subcontinent covering itself in WEEE

Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime

India's production of high-tech waste is far higher than previously thought, according to a report by Delhi-headquartered environmental organisation Toxics Link.

The report claims that the country now generates around 150,000 tonnes of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) a year, including computers, TVs, fridges, and washing machines. This is on top of all the e-waste shipped into the country from elsewhere under the guise of scrap or second-hand goods, Toxic Link director Ravi Agwarwal said.

He said the worst culprit is the commercial and financial capital of Mumbai, although much of its WEEE is then shipped to Delhi which has become India's main recycling base - thanks in part to the slack enforcement of laws banning hazardous waste processing in residential areas.

Agwarwal claimed that Toxic Link's research showed Mumbai was discarding much more electronic waste than had been estimated, and he called for India to install "proper and adequate e-waste management systems".

He added that because India currently has no organised alternative for recycling, most of the country's WEEE finds its way into the "informal sector". This poses serious pollution and health risks as it involves crude methods for dismantling and storage, minimal capital input, and zero health and environmental safeguards. ®

Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner

More from The Register

SCO vs. IBM battle resumes over ownership of Unix
Zombie lawsuit back and wants to suck the brains out of Linux
 breaking news
What's HP got under wraps? Looks awfully flash and tape shaped
What happens in Vegas won't stay there - we've got the details
Microsoft borks botnet takedown in Citadel snafu
Stupid Redmond kicked over our honeypots, wail white hats
IBM's $1bn layoffs latest: Now axe swings in US, Canada - reports
Union claims 121 storage bods canned after dismal sales
NetApp musters muscular cluster bluster for ONTAP busters
Storage array OS overhauled to juggle more nodes, go down on you, er, less
HP adds 'Haswell' Xeon E3s to entry ProLiant servers
Gussies up MicroServer for SMBs, adds baby switches
Buffalo herds DDR3 RAMs into DriveStation's spinning rust corrals
Claims cache-packed gear keeps up with flash drives
'THINNEST EVER' spinning terabyte beauty slips out of WD fabs
Size-zero drive packs a whopping 143GB per millimetre