Know how do you manage your e-waste

Do you remember, what did you do with your last phone or laptop after you bought the new one? You must have sold it to the kabariwala or may be thrown in the bin? It is surprising that no more than 10% to 15% of people are aware of the e-waste issues in Kolkata and how it is polluting the environment. Along with the

KMC

and

Pollution Control Board

, several NGOs and recycling companies are now reaching out to the school and housing societies to collect the e-waste, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.

There are three ways one can dispose of the e-waste – exchange, selling to the ragpickers and proper recycling through a registered company. Whenever you are buying new gadgets by exchanging the old ones, you are recycling it. When you are selling it to a ragpicker, that person either takes it to the unorganized recycler or to the secondhand market, where the machine is repaired and sold. And when it is given to a recycling company, the machines are dismantled and each of the parts is recycled. However, often the ragpickers extract expensive metals like gold, silver and platinum from the gadgets and dump the rest of the parts. “For an example, there are majorly three parts in a laptop – plastic body, wires and circuits. When the laptop reaches a recycles, each of these parts is separated and then recycled with the guarantee that those parts will not be resold in the market,” said

Pranab Goel

, CEO of

Vital Waste

, a recycling company.