Tech News Desk –India is slowly becoming a manufacturing hub for electronics. Specially manufacturing mobile phones, that’s why mobile company like Apple has started making iPhone here. More than 120 crore population of the country has mobile phones. In such a situation, there is also a danger of increasing electronic waste. However, the domestic electrical and electronics manufacturing industry disagrees. Rohit Pathak, President of Indian Electrical and Electronics Manufacturers Association (IEMA) and CEO of Birla Copper (Hindalco Industries) said in an exclusive conversation with TV9 Digital that the way the policy has come is just to ‘scrap’ the vehicles. In the times to come, the structure for sending ‘scrap mobile phones’ can be prepared in the same way.
scrap certificate and rebate
Rohit Pathak said that there is a policy framework for e-waste, it just needs to be implemented with a little push. Once the economic model related to e-waste is developed, people themselves will start giving their electronic waste for exchange. At the same time, in the coming years, if the companies focus on ‘Extending Producer Responsibility’ (EPR), it will focus on buying old electronic waste from the people themselves. In fact, Rohit Pathak was questioned about the way the government has asked people to give ‘discount certificates’ for scrapping vehicles, which they can use to buy a new car. Can the same arrangement be made for electronic waste?
In response, he said that many companies such as Samsung and Apple still offer discounts to their customers on old electronic equipment. In the coming years, an economic model will develop whereby people depositing mobile phone or other e-waste waste will get a certificate that they can use to buy other products.
Junk business needs to be organized
The biggest problem in proper disposal of e-waste, says Rohit Pathak, is the cash economy or the unorganized sector of the junk business. He said that the work of e-waste collection needs to be more organized so that it can be disposed of properly. He said that such a system has to be made which will be linked to GST or any other formal sector at the entry level of e-waste. With this, its entire system will start recovering to the top. Similarly, an economic model of this will be prepared. Rohit Pathak said that the recycle of e-waste has potential, as it would allow the recovery of important metals in valuable quantities.