Waste management

The environment ministry's reported move to initiate the process of fixing norms for safe disposals of electronic waste has not come a day too soon.

Thanks to the country's information and communication technology revolution, the problem of e-waste disposal is assuming massive proportions.

As it is, about 1.5 million computers and nearly three million mobile phones are estimated to be disposed of every year. These are in addition to the millions of video games, chips, telephones and other such items discarded every year.

All this constitutes potentially hazardous wastes. Many of these gadgets contain elements like lead, chromium, brominated flame retardants and lots of other substances that can possibly be injurious to human health.

Without proper and safe destruction, recycling or disposal, these wastes could be a major source of toxic pollutants and a threat to human and animal lives, environment and ground and surface water.

What is more worrisome are the reports that other countries are also surreptitiously dumping part of their e-waste in India through metal scrap exports. Europe alone is believed to have dumped several thousand tonnes of perilous waste along with metal scrap being imported into India through West Asia.

The real danger from the harmful wastes becomes all the more alarming when viewed in its totality, taking into consideration the other unsafe wastes generated by hospitals, chemical products and non-biodegradable products like plastics. The hospitals alone are estimated to be producing over 3 million tones of hazardous wastes every year which are not disposed of properly.

Besides, large quantities of toxic chemical wastes emanating from pesticides and other toxic chemicals are compounding this problem. Though this menace is not exclusive to India, it surely is more serious here than elsewhere.

Many developed countries have sought to tackle it by following the Basel convention, which lays down guidelines for not only transboundary movements of hazardous wastes but also for collections, transport and disposal of these wastes locally. Going a step further, this global convention also stipulates the measures needed for the after-care of the hazardous waste disposal sites.

Unfortunately, though India joined the Basel convention way back in the early 1990s, it has done precious little to implement it. Otherwise, at least the foreign countries could not have used India as the dumping ground for their unwanted and potentially dangerous stuff.

In fact, even now it is not too late to invoke this convention to prevent the entry of such material by making it mandatory for the metal scrap exporters to certify that the cargoes do not contain hazardous wastes. The country's failure on the waste disposal front is reflected also in the unabated problem of medical waste disposal, which is already creating environmental and socio-economic problems.

No doubt, the environment ministry drafted the bio-medical waste (management and handling) rules over a decade ago following a Supreme Court ruling to this effect, but not one of the state governments has so far enforced them strictly and effectively.

Thus, it is time the country evolved a well-conceived and broad-based strategy for proper disposals of all kinds of pernicious wastes through measures like safe destruction, re-cycling, or dumping in the designated landfill sites for different kinds of wastes.

Of course, proper after-care of the waste disposal sites will have to be ensured. Otherwise, what is sought to be a solution may at a later date turn into a problem itself.