Sibal also openly thrashed western companies wanting to only trade with India, disregarding an important aspect of managing environmental impact on consumers in other parts of the world.
The rate at which technology is advancing and also getting obsolete, one can imagine the amount of e-waste generated globally. Divulging details around the same, telecom minister, Kapil Sibal shared that around 40-50 million tonnes of electronics waste is generated globally every year out of which India accounts for just 0.8 million. E-waste is basically the discarded electrical or electronic devices.
At an event, Sibal further stated that, “By the time, market in domestic industry becomes buoyant, people get concerned about enormity of the market and then western world starts yelling us that we must start managing e-waste.”
Sibal also openly thrashed western companies wanting to only trade with India, disregarding an important aspect of managing environmental impact on consumers in other parts of the world. “The western world encourages liberalisation and wants to encourage global trade. It persuades rest of the world to lower tariff barrier so that it can export products in to India. Around 90 per cent of the components are imported from outside and they are assembled here. There is no real domestic (electronics) manufacturing industry,” he added.
The minister also stressed on the point that those who originally make the product should be held responsible for managing their e-waste. “Yet I am very happy that we are talking about end-to- end solution about e-waste management in India,” he said.
At present, there are 23 organised firms in India to process electronics waste and around 3,000 players in non-formal sector that are to be converted in to formal process.
