Why Rising Mounts Of E-Waste Jeopardise India’s Technology-Driven Growth
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While Bengaluru’s meteoric growth as a hot
E-waste or electronic waste is broadly contributed by electrical or electronic devices, which are destined for disposal, reuse, resale or recycling. These include cathode ray tubes or CRTs that are used in TVs, computer monitors, ATM and video cameras; printed circuit boards (thin plates on which chips and other electronic components are placed); chips and other gold plated components; plastics from printers, keyboards and monitors and computer wires.
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In developing countries e-waste is processed informally mostly in the unorganised sector, without the help of machines and technology which exasperate the threat posed by it. In third-world countries, this waste is simply dumped at landfills and incinerators (apparatus for burning waste material, especially industrial waste, at high temperatures until it is reduced to ash). Materials such as heavy metals are leaked from such landfills, polluting soil and water bodies and thus posing serious threat to those living nearby. Heavy metals such as lead and barium get leached to the ground water, leading to the release of toxic phosphor. Other hazardous materials like brominated dioxin, beryllium cadmium and mercury also get discharged into rivers which carry them to far-off places and other water bodies. Brominated dioxins, heavy metals and hydrocarbons result in emissions of toxic fumes which cause breathing problems which over a period of time result in serious respiratory diseases. Hydrocarbons, heavy metals and brominated substances discharged directly into rivers also acidify fish and flora while tin and lead contaminate surface and groundwater, triggering significant risk to workers and communities living close to the locations where waste is disposed.
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Villagers living around the landfill site at Mandur, 25 kms from Bengaluru, have been bearing the brunt of the IT city's garbage, including e-waste, for years. They have been protesting against dumping of garbage which has created huge mounds, leading to respiratory diseases. Over the last couple of years attempts of villagers at Mandur and other landfill sites around Bengaluru to block trucks carrying waste led to disruption of waste-management in the city (civic activities say now Bengaluru’s nickname should be ‘garbage city’ not ‘garden city’). Several deaths of villagers at Mandur and other landfill sites over the years supposedly caused by exposure to polluted air and water point to the huge threat posed by unorganised disposal of garbage, a significant part of which is increasingly becoming e-waste in most Indian cities, and how it can impede society’s health and broader economic growth too.
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