HYDERABAD: It seems that the focus has always been on big cities when it comes to the collection of e-waste. Often it is ignored that a large number of consumers of electrical and electronic goods reside in rural areas, towns and developing cities.
Apart from inventorisation of e-waste in Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) limits, the EPTRI also inventoried e-waste in five other municipal corporations in the state which includes, Greater Warangal, Nalgonda, Khammam, Nizamabad, and Karimnagar.
In 2016-17, the five municipal corporations generated an estimated of 5,651 MT e-waste of which, Greater Warangal generated the largest amount of e-waste among to 3,247 MT, which is likely to increase up to 4,713 MT by 2021-22. Similar to Hyderabad, in Warangal, a large amount of the e-waste is generated by households. In fact, in 2016-17 only 55.4 MT was estimated to have been generated by bulk producers like public and private institutions and 3,192 MT was generated from households.
According to the report, the projected figures of e-waste generation in the year, 2021-22 for other municipal corporations are 1,160MT for Nizamabad, 904 MT for Khammam, 816 MT for Karimnagar, and 689 MT for Nalgonda.
EPTRI also presented e-waste generations figures based on two separate methodologies and projected 80,385 MT e-waste generated for the year 2016. Of this, rural areas are estimated to have generated 21,647 MT.
75 per cent
of e-waste in Hyderabad comes from households and small consumers and not from bulk consumers of electrical and electronic goods like public and private institutions, big scale manufacturers and IT companies. In 2016-17, households in HMDA generated 21,197 MT e-waste