It's a bit of an obvious thing to do, but Attero Recycling has its plant in a green building. About 10 kilometres from Roorkee on the road to Dehradun, it is difficult to miss.
As we reach the gates, a security guard stops our car and says no vehicle can go in. As we enter on foot, the obvious gets accentuated. The walls of the plant have boards that talk about the benefits of recycling and how the plant reuses everything, harvests rainwater and uses solar lights. The 40-odd who work there wear green shirts on black trousers.
It’s a sprawling unit. Spread over 10,000 square metres, the plant can treat 36,000 tonnes of electronic waste a year. Given that this is the country's only authorised end-to-end e-waste recycling outfit, not to mention the colour of the building and the boards, you would think that the plant is rattling along at full steam. After all, India's e-waste generation is tipped to nudge half a million tonnes next year, up from 3,30,000 tonnes in 2007, according to Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology and the German government's sustainable development body GTZ. We also import about 50,000 tonnes every year.
Not quite, says Nitin Gupta, the company's chief executive officer. There is simply not enough e-waste coming to Attero. Since becoming operational in November last year, it has treated only about 500 tonnes. “The problem is collection of e-waste. Almost 98 per cent of the e-waste recycling is done in the unorganised sector. Lack of awareness is the main cause of this,” he says.
The World Health Organisation defines e-waste as electronics and electrical goods which are not fit for their original intended use or have reached the end of their life cycle. These include computers, servers, printers, scanners, calculators, battery cells, mobile phones, televisions and refrigerators.
E-waste contains 60 different types of metals. Almost 75 per cent of the e-waste is generated in the corporate sector mostly by information technology companies. Attero collects it from kabaadiwallas, companies and individuals through a 24-hour helpline. For big items like washing machines, the consumer pays Attero. For personal computers, Attero pays Rs 200 per unit to the consumer. But the helpline, although toll-free, gets a mere 20 calls every month.
Also Read
Seeded three years ago with Rs 25 crore from two venture capital firms, NEA-IndoUS Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Attero earns its bread by refurbishing and reselling computers. So far, it has sold 120 PCs for Rs 4,500 each. The buyers are mostly students.
We proceed to the area where three gigantic machines are at work. Gupta's fingerprints act as biometric identification. The entire plant is under surveillance by close-circuit television. We are asked to wear protective headgear with a tissue inside and earplugs. “We didn't use tissues earlier. However, when some officials from the United Nations visited us, they refused to put on the helmets for hygiene reasons.”
The first machine, which accumulates e-waste, has two persons throwing defunct CD-ROMs into it. This matter then goes into the segregator for separating the usable from the non-usable. The non-usable goes into the shredder — the third machine — where the ferrous and non-ferrous components are separated.
“We have tied up with Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, for sample and efficiency testing of our processes at different stages. Two PhD students do testing on a metallurgical and chemical basis every evening. The results come at night,” says Gupta. Will the students join Attero? “We would like them to. We do need engineers here,” he says.
Gupta has pinned his hopes on the Union government's draft rules for managing, dismantling or recycling e-waste, called the E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2010. “With these rules, e-waste, which was till now included in the hazardous substances category, will be put into a separate category. This definition is good for formal sector players who recycle e-waste,” says Ravi Agarwal, director, Toxics Link, a non-government organisation working on hazardous waste.
The rules ensure producers' responsibility through a cradle-to-grave approach. “I am hopeful that we will be able to process 10 times more e-waste this year than we have done till now,” says Gupta. And then, Attero's plant will be greener than its walls.