E- waste is term encompassing various forms of electrical and electronic equipments that may be old, might have reached end of life and most importantly cease to be any value to their owners.
The electronic and electrical goods are broadly classified under three major heads.
White goods:
Comprising of house hold appliances like refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners.
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Brown goods:
This include televisions, cameras etc. and
Grey goods:
This includes computers, scanners, printers, mobiles phones etc.
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Other sources of e-waste are consumer and lighting equipment, electrical and electronic tools, sophisticated toys, sports equipment, medical devices, monitoring and control instruments etc.
To tackle the problem of e-waste in the country, a combination of short and long term measures needs to be taken. Among the short-term measures, the most important is the sensitization of the various stake-holders followed by putting in place the systems to manage environmentally sound disposal of E-waste.
The extensive network of informal recyclers can be utilized for the purposes of involving them in collection and segregation of the e-waste. Among the top ten cities generating e-waste, Mumbai ranks first followed by Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, and Kolkata.
The long-term measures might be at the design aspect of the products and ensuring restricted use of hazardous substances in the new products being launched in the market etc. Apart from these measures, all our actions should be guided by sustainable development principle which has been defined in the world commission on environment and development report commonly known as Brundtland report in 1987 “as the development should be as that the need of the present to be made with considering the need of future generations.