Sustainable Recycling Technology for Electronic Waste

Abstract

Electronic waste (e-waste) generation, accumulation and affordable technology to recycle e-waste are of global concern and India is facing similar challenges. The e-waste Rules, 2011 have been enacted on 12 May 2012 in India to address the issue. In India, about 95% of e-waste is, however, being recycled in the unorganised sector by crude means to primarily extract precious metals (gold, silver and copper) from printed circuit boards (PCBs), thereby harming the environment and affecting the health of the workers. This practice needs to be discouraged by providing affordable recycling technology. Authorised recyclers in India are broadly engaged in the segregation and disassembly processes. PCB recycling, however, is predominantly carried out abroad. Recovery of valuable resources from waste is essential to conserve the depletion of natural resources. E-wastes contain a number of precious metals and are alternative resources of metals, which are available in very limited quantities in nature. The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has developed several affordable technologies to recycle e-waste. Processing technology was developed at the pilot scale level for the recycling of e-waste at the National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML), Jamshedpur, India. Recovery processes for precious metals from PCBs have been developed jointly by the Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET), Hyderabad and E-Parisaraa, Bangalore. A master batch and value-added products were successfully developed from e-waste plastics at the Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology (CIPET), Bhubaneswar as part of technology transfer. This chapter aims to apprise the reader of DeitY’s effort in developing cost-effective technology to recycle e-waste in an environmentally friendly manner.