NEW DELHI: India's electronic waste (e-waste) generation has jumped eight times post 2004 even as an ill-prepared government is still groping in the dark in how to deal with the issue. A report by India's Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, revealed that by the end of 2012, India will be facing a eight-ton heap of e-waste, eight times more than what it had to handle seven years ago. The report also highlighted the issues of illegal incineration as well as illegal imports to the tune of 50,000 tons fromd eveloped countries. “E-waste contains minerals that are both toxic and valuable to the industry. Heavy metals are harmful to the environment and pose grave health hazards,” the MoEF report said. “The burning of metals can give rise to dioxins and furans during incineration. Arsenic and asbestos may act as a catalyst to increase the formation of dioxins, which is carcinogenic in nature,” the report also says. It was only last year that the Union Government woke up to the threat posed bye-waste by notifying the “e-Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011,” which made producers “responsible for environmentally sound management of the end-of-life products, including collection and recycling.” In India e-waste comes not just from computers, but also from household electronic appliances and tools, electronic toys, medical devices, mobile phones, monitoring and control instruments, automatic dispensers, I-T and telecom equipment and other consumer electronic items. The report also named India's commercial capital Mumbai as being the biggest culprit in e-waste generation. The national capital New Delhi comes second in the list followed by other metropolitan cities most of which are located in big cities.
