Barun Roy's column "A dangerous wasteland" (Asia File, September 5) has rightly highlighted a serious problem. The e-waste (management & handling) Rules, 2011 came into effect in 2012, but its progress has been tardy. The guidelines and rules are based on the Extended Producer Responsibility principle that assign responsibility on the producers for collection and processing of e-waste. With a boom in the use of mobile phones and compact fluorescent lamps, each vendor should have collection bins to collect the waste. The information on electronic scrap collection centres for consumers has not been made available in most cities. A study by an NGO exposed the absence of public information on most pollution controls boards. As many as 15 of the 35 boards did not even have any information related to e-waste on their websites, which is a key public interface point. The country is saddled with huge toxic waste and merely creating rules and regulations is meaningless unless they are publicised and enforced.
M M Gurbaxani Bangalore
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