E waste Management – Solutions and Way Ahead

Course: Management Information Systems

Instructor: Pritwis Mukherjee

Harsh Bansal

Vinod Gupta School Of Management, IIT Kharagpur

Abstract: With rampant growth of electronic goods and short life cycle of the goods e-waste management

has become one of big issues being facedby countries today. It has been estimated that around 25 million

tons of e-waste is generated each year and is growing by 4-5 % each year. In this paper I have tried to

analyze different types of e-waste generatedby industries across different countries. Various possible

solutions likerecycle and efficient disposal mechanisms have been looked upon. It has been also been

discussed how collaborations with big organizations and Public-Private partnerships can be achieved in a

mutually beneficial way to help society and generate profits.

1. Introduction:

Sustainable development is one of the biggest issues faced by the world today. For sustainable

development sustainable innovation is required. 3R Principle – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is very important

is ensuring sustainable development. Recycling reduces waste and reduces consumption of natural

resources and improves energy efficiency. Apart from other issues like global warming one of the biggest

issues faced by the world today is rampant growth of e-waste.

The electronic industry is the one of world’s largest and fastest growing manufacturing industry. It has

revolutionized the whole world and its presence can be felt in the life of each and every human being.

Most of the human beings use at least one of the electro personal computers, refrigerators, printers,

Televisions, Toys etc. This rampant growth has resulted in pilling up of tons of Waste from Electrical and

Electronic Equipment (WEEE) or e-waste. It has been estimated that around 50 million tons of e-waste is

generated each year. The problem of e-waste has been exaggerated by the shortening life cycle of

electronic products.

Informal or no e waste management has a large number of ramifications. Some of them are:

Leakage of toxic materials like mercury, cadmium, beryllium, and flame retardants.

Loss of high value materials like palladium, gold, copper etc.

Leakage of toxic gases in the environment.

Health hazards caused due to improper treatment of e-waste in the informal industry especially in

the developing countries.

Negligent transfer of obsolete goods from developed countries to under developed countries.

2. Fundamentals of WEEE recycling:

The basic issues involved in e-waste management are:

Need for formal WEEE management.

Main steps involved in WEEE management.

Issue to be addressed.

Frame work which address process selection.

2.1 Need for formal WEEE management

Two major factors which drive WEEE management are recovery of precious metals and saving environment from numerous environmental hazards. For example mobile phones contain more than 40 elements like cobalt, copper, antimony, tin and indium. It also contains precious metals like silver, palladium and gold. With the huge growth in telecom sector and sky rocketing growth of mobile phones this offers a huge potential for reprocessing the metals present. Apart from metals some ceramic and plastics can also be processed. Major elements present in mobile phone are shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: Material content mobile phones devices Source: Umicore 2008

Similarly a large number of materials are used in laptops and Personal Computers

which are also growing exponentially. Other equipments like toys, cameras,

televisions, LCD also have a huge amount of similar materials as well as iron

content.

Due to short product life cycle of electronic goods, electronic goods manufacturing

has surmounted almost all other manufacturing industries. This has put a great

pressure on the limited some of some materials. Now electronic goods account for a

significant consumption of a large variety of metals and the price increase of

several of metals have been in direct relation to growth in the electronic industry.

The monetary value of important equipment metals in electronic industry has

reached 45 billion dollars at 2007 levels. Hence, formal WEEE management offers a

viable and economical feasible business opportunity.

Second major benefit from formal WEEE management is protection of environment.

Mining of metals used in electric and electronic equipment industry have a

significant environmental impact. It generates a large amount of CO2 and puts a

large strain on limited land and water resources. The estimated CO2 generated by

mining of major metals used in EEE is shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: Co2 emitted in production of various metals used in EEE. Source: UNEP step report

Recycling metals generates significantly less amount of CO2 and have other considerable benefits like

optimum usage of water etc.

Improper discarding results in emissions of hazardous gases and has negative impact on environment.

Toxic gases have been categorized into three categories:

Primary emissions: Hazardous substances that present in electronic waste (e.g

mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), fluorinated cooling

fluids, lead5,arsenic etc.),

Secondary emissions: Various toxic materials produced as the result of improper treatment of e-

waste (e.g. dioxins formed by inappropriate smelting of plastics)

Tertiary emissions: Toxic substances that are used during recycling process

(e.g. cyanide and mercury for gold amalgamation).

Hence an efficient and proper e-waste management process is required.

2.2 Main steps involved in WEEE management.

Figure 3: Recycling Chain. Source: UNEP step report

The recycling process majorly consists of three main steps:

1. Collection – Collection plays a very important role as different Electrical and Electronic

Equipments consist of different metals required. Hence, efficient collection mechanism should be

in place covering major markets across geographies.

2. Dismantling and Pre-processing: It includes separating the reusable materials from the waste and

separating the toxic waste for proper disposal.

3. End Processing: It includes processing the separated material and treating it in a appropriate

fashion to extract desired material and disposing waste in a environment friendly fashion.

2.3 Issue to be addressed.

Important issues which can be addressed using efficient and regulated e-waste management are:

Reduce the toxic emissions.

Ensure proper disposal of hazardous and toxic substances,

Recovery of valuable materials.

Create environment friendly and economically friendly business.

Provide job opportunities,

2.4 Frame work

Figure 4: Frame work E-waste management. Source: electronic waste management inIndia–issues and strategies kurian joseph

Framework in a recycle process majorly includes;

Collection centers with proper regulation of imports to desired recycling centers.

Recycling centers with processes in place ensuring safety of environment and of workers. Also

ensuring the economic feasibility of the process.

Disposal of waste and shipping the reprocessed material to appropriate industries.

Creating public awareness and highlighting the potential advantages.

3. Current Status and upcoming technologies for e-waste management:

Presently most of the e-waste management is processed under informal sector and lacks a proper

formal mechanism. Most of the e-waste from developed countries is being shipped to developing

countries and some small business units have come up in these developing countries. But the major

problem is the lack of proper technology.

Upcoming technologies can be classified into two parts:

3.1 Preprocessing Technologies

Shredding and separation: Major technologies for shredding and separation are magnetic belts and

magnetic current separators. Apart from this magnetic induction and other physical properties can also

be used. It should be ensured that in the case of C&F appliances shredding happens in a closed

container. For ICT appliances it should be ensured that confidential data is destroyed using shredding.

For ICT appliances multi stage shredding and separation is effective. Manual dismantling using electric or

pneumatic screwdrivers followed by mechanical dismantling is very effective. For devices like monitors

and TVs containing CRTs the process is first removal of CRT from T.V/monitor using technologies like

laser cutting, hot wire cutting, diamond wire/saw fluidized bed cleaning system etc.

Figure 5 : Magnetic separator Source: tradekorea.com

3.2 End-processing Technologies

Different materials segregated using preprocessing technologies have different end processing

technologies for extracting the useful metals. They can be majorly classified as:

Pyrometallurgy: In this waste is exposed to high temperature in a furnace or a smelter and

metals are separated from impurities.

Hydrometallurgy: It uses caustic or strong acidic solution to selectively dissolve and precipitate

metals.

Electrometallurgy: It uses electric currents to separate metals from impurities.

Apart from these Biometallurgical processes are in incubation stage and are not used in the industry.

Another important aspect is the proper disposal of dioxins and other acidic gases produced during

pyrometallurgy. For this suitable off-gas cleaning systems like adiabatic coolers, filters and catalytic

decompositions are used.

Integrated smelting and refining are used due to complex nature of the material. It consists of majorly two

operations i.e. extraction of precious metals and base metals. First step is smelting and it uses IsaSmelt

submerged lance combustion technology with proper off gas emission control system. At around 1200oC

coke, enriched air and fuel are injected. Injected air and fuel results in rapid chemical reactions, precious

metals dissolves in the copper, while other are dissolved in lead slag. After smelting copper is treated in

electro-winning plant and lead slag is treated in blast furnance.

At leach-electrowinning plant, the granulated copper is treated with sulfuric acid. This results in copper

sulphate solution and precious metals as concentrated residue. Copper sulphate solution is treated in

elsctrowinning plant which results in 99.99% pure copper. The precious metals residue is refined at the

precious metals refinery. Precious metals like gold, silver etc are obtained to 99.99% purity. The slag is

certified building material and is put to use. The complete smelting and refining process has been

depicted in the following figure.

Figure 6: Integrated smelting and refining process. Source: Umicore

4. Economic Potential

Sustainable innovation and green technology are two emerging fields with huge potential in upcoming

future. It is the need of the hour as we have limited resources and it is very difficult to sustain without

efficient usage of resources. E-waste management is also a step in this direction. It is not only very

important for environment but also offers a very promising business opportunity. In future with rising

electronic production and reducing product life cycle e-waste will exponentially increase.

Major factors which highlight the economic potential are:

Electronic goods use a vast amount of metals. This results in economically feasible business

opportunity by recycling the metals especially in the present scenario in which metal prices have

gone up significantly.

More gold can be found in one ton of e-waste then in one ton of a gold rock. Various electrical

and electronic equipments containing precious metals can be recycled and metals can be

extracted.

E-waste can be re-located from developing to developing and under developed countries as there

is still huge amount of gap between technologies used in developing and under-developed

countries.

As this issue focuses on environment a large amount of incentives and tax rebates are available

from governments of various countries. Also technological and financial help can be sought from

government.

Once infrastructure in place it can be leveraged to handle large amount of e-waste. E-waste will

increase in upcoming future with huge consumption potential of developing countries like India

and China.

SWOT analysis of the potential business plan is:

Strengths:

Support of local and national governments.

Mobile phones and Laptops are expected to drive future growth.

Weakness:

Lack of guidance from governments regarding compliance mechanisms.

Transfer of technology from developed to developing countries.

Lack of stringent guidelines on disposal of e-waste

Opportunities:

Support from corporate sector with increasing awareness.

Decentralized approach and easily scalable with low amount of investment.

Geographically flexible and can be replicated at other locations.

Threats:

Cheaper cost of recycling in informal sectors.

Lack of awareness among retail consumers of electronic goods.

5. Indian Scenario

India is one of the fastest growing markets for electronic goods. Despite of that India lacks proper laws or

guidelines governing electronic waste management. Under Hazardous waste rules (1989) electronic

waste is not treated as toxic until and unless it is proved of containing certain toxic substances. Though

PCBs and CRTs most of the time exceed these parameters, but there are several open areas which need

to be addressed. India is one of the destinations where e-waste arrives from various developed countries

and is treated. But after Basel convention and protest by various this has reduced.

Majority of recycling in India is still done by the informal sector. Some of the steps taken by government to

improve awareness about potential threats of e-waste are:

A National Working Group has been constituted for formulating a strategy for Electronic waste

management and will look after all pertinent issues.

Central Pollution Control Board has initiated a rapid assessment plan for electronic waste

generated in major metropolitan cities.

Projects showing demonstration have been set up by the Department of Information Technology for recovery of copper from Printed Circuit Boards.

Some of the regulatory models in place in the developed nations are shown in below figure.

Figure 7: Regulatory models. Source: Business Press, UNEP, Central Pollution Control Board

The emphasis is on collective responsibility of government, producers and E-waste management

companies.

In India and other developing countries these kind of regulations with responsibility of each and every stake holders should be enforced.

6. Current Players

In the current scenario one of the major competitors is the informal sector. Informal sector has the cost

advantage as it doesn’t follow and rules and regulations. Due to low awareness in retail households a lot

of electronic waste is reaching informal sector resulting in harm to the environment and people involved in

treating electronic waste.

Apart from informal sectors major global competitors are like industry pioneers Sims Recycling Solutions,

Umicore. They have huge capacities and presence in varied geographies. Apart from these companies

there a lot of small start-up companies which have come up in the developing countries.

7. Challenges

Lack of suitable rules and regulations at national and international level that can address the

problem of disposal of e-waste.

Lack of awareness among the corporate and the retail households related to hazards of unsafe

disposal of e-waste management.

No major innovations hubs and centers of excellence in developing countries addressing the

issue of electronic waste management. This has resulted in stagnation of the technology used in

e-waste management.

Hurdles involved in the transfer of technology from developed countries to developing countries.

Developed countries are reluctant to share the technologies.

Lack of public private partnerships to address the problem of electronic waste management.

Lack of a adequate B2B platform where companies can engage in business transactions.

8.

MajorAlthough awareness and readiness for implementing improvements is increasing rapidly, themajor obstacles to manage the e wastes safely and effectively remain. These include• The lack of reliable data that poses a challenge to policy makers wishing to design an e-wastemanagement strategy and to an industry wishing to make rational investment decisions.• Only a fraction of the e waste (estimated 10%) finds its way to recyclers due to absence of anefficient take back scheme for consumers,• The lack of a safe e waste recycling infrastructure in the formal sector and thus reliance on thecapacities of the informal sector pose severe risks to the environment and human health.• The existing e waste recycling systems are purely business-driven that have come aboutwithout any government intervention. Any development in these e waste sectors will have tobe built on the existing set-up as the waste collection and pre-processing can be handledefficiently by the informal sector, at the same time offer numerous job opportunities.