Titan finds partner to sort out e-waste

Saahas, an NGO which facilitates e-waste management, has now tied up with watch retailer Titan Industries to recycle the enormous waste generated from old wrist watches being exchanged during the exchange offer run by Titan.

Last year, the firm had exchanged between 600,000-700,000 wrist watches. Many of those watches went into land-fills. With some dangerous metals being constituents of the watches, they end up polluting the land. This year it is expected to touch a million watches.

“For Titan, this is not only a tactical move, but also a strategic move,” said Ajay H Chawla, vice president, global business head — Titan & Retail, Titan Industries.

 

According to Wilma Rodrigues, founder member of Saahas, the NGO works to bring to the attention of the people the need for a solution to e-waste.

With the help of the firms, it has been able to put up bins for disposal of e-waste. “We need corporate partnerships, create awareness through hoardings, television and other mass media,” she added.

Saahas is focussing on tubelights in a big way as tubelights are a major waste generated by tech parks.

In partnerships with technology parks, it has set up collection centres. Saahas has been working towards introducing regulations in the use and disposal of plastic and other household hazardous wastes like batteries, light bulbs and electronic waste. Saahas is supported by the Indo-German-Swiss Partnership for e-waste.

India generated 3.3 lakh tonnes e-waste in 2007 and is expected to touch 4.7 lakh tonnes by 2011, citing the of the inventory study of MAIT and GTZ presented in December 2007. The illegal import of e-waste abroad added another 50 tonnes.

Other findings of the study were that out of the material entering the waste stream, only 5 per cent is recycled by authorised recyclers. The rest is treated by the informal sector. Only 6 per cent of the organisations observed for the study had a disposal policy for e-waste.

Considering the big potential of harming the environment and the human health, this study shows alarming results.