Effective electronic waste management and recycling process involving formal and non-formal sectors

Electronics waste is becoming a crisis for the society. Huge accumulation of e-waste and their recycling through primitive means for extraction of precious metals is real concern in the developing countries as e-waste contains hazardous materials. Recycling of e-waste through proper technologies is, however, considered to be a profitable business in developed countries due to the presence of precious metals (including gold, silver etc.) in printed circuit boards (PCBs). The present recycling cost is, however, not viable and thereby huge volume of e-waste is being exported to the developing countries like India, China, Brazil etc., where manpower is in-expensive and enforcement of environmental laws is not so stringent. This article is proposing an outsourcing model where equal participation of the formal and non-formal sector is ensured to make the e-waste management business a profitable one. The main motivation for non-formal operators is to extract precious metals (gold, silver) from printed circuit board (PCB) using unscientific and unhygienic methods, which are harmful to the workers and the environment. This practice needs to be discouraged by providing appropriate price to the non-formal operators for the materials they collected. In the proposed approach, non-formal operators will concentrate on collection, disassembly, segregation of e-waste, whereas, formal sector will concentrate on processing the PCBs to extract precious metals. The 95-97% of the e-waste by weight contains metal, glass and plastics, which can easily be dissembled and segregated manually without damaging environment; whereas, the rest 3-5% by weight of e-waste actually consists of PCBs/connectors, need environmentally friendly recycling techniques to manage. The major segregated materials from e-waste, including metals, glass and plastic parts can be recycled through the conventional recycling practices used in municipality waste management by organized smelters and re-processors. The segregated PCB and connectors will be pulverized by professional agency to make homogenous powder and assessment of assay content of the powder will be done to know the worth of the PCBs. Once the right price is decided, non-formal sector can sell the PCBs to the formal recyclers for further process. This approach will allow the formal recyclers to concentrate only on processing PCBs, which requires technologies, specialized skills and expertise. The said approach will eradicate the unhygienic practice prevailing in non-formal units in developing countries and thereby will stop polluting environment, soil, water, and will also protect the health of the worker. Once the outsourced model is established, the recycling of e-waste business will again be viable. It will also ensure the higher yield of metal recovery from e-waste as well as minimum landfill.