Veena Sahajwalla, the crusader from India who recycles electronic waste

The Mumbai-born Indo-Australian scientist is waging a war against electronic waste with her novel invention of the world's first microfactory

Do you know that one tonne of mobile phones -- that's 6,000 handsets -- contains 130 kg of copper, 3.5 kg of silver, 340 gm of gold and 140 gm of palladium? With global Android phone shipments approaching 1.41 billion by 2022, according to an IDC report, imagine the amount of electronic waste this would produce, which will ultimately enter landfills and pollute the environment.

The only solution to tackle this e-waste menace is to bring the waste back to life. Recycling things like paper, glass and plastic is quite common nowadays. But Veena Sahajwalla, a Mumbai-born Indo-Australian scientist, is waging a war against electronic junk, through her novel invention of the world’s first micro-factory to tackle e-waste.

Sahajwalla, an alumnus of IIT-Kanpur, learnt at a very young age that waste is actually not waste, when she saw the kabadiwallas buying trash from her house in return for money. She calls them the ‘waste warriors’, as they would collect waste and create value out of it. “There was an underpinning excitement in me that there could be an economy built around waste somebody else doesn't need,” she says.

For the ice-cream lover, who recalls eating plates of the dessert for dinner during her college days, the childhood consciousness about a fair and equitable world triggered her passion for recycling. This ultimately led the materials engineer on the path of inventing the micro-factory, which took five years to develop and was launched in April 2018. It showcases a process developed by the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT), which was founded by Sahajwalla at the University of New South Wales. The technology breaks down the components of discarded electronic items such as mobile phones, laptops and printers into new and reusable material that can then be used to manufacture high-value products. "There is no need to dump this e-waste when it can be used to produce high-value metal alloys and carbon," she says.

This micro-factory has a number of small machines that fit into an area of about 50 square metres. The discarded electronic devices and items are first put into a module to break them down. The next module may involve a special robot to extract useful parts. Another module uses a small furnace to separate the metallic parts into valuable material, while another one reforms the plastic, which accounts for 40 per cent of the waste, into filament suitable for 3D printing.

Sahajwalla, who had earlier this year met Indian government officials to discuss her inventions, feels the micro-factory can be deployed at Seelampur and Mayapuri areas in Delhi which are known for housing hundreds and thousands of e-waste recycling shops. This can help the kabadiwallas make money by creating value-added products in a safe and sustainable way, she adds.

She also invented the ‘green steel’ process in 2005, which uses recycled plastics and rubber tyres in steelmaking, replacing coke and coal in electric arc steel furnaces.

The Chemistry and Mathematics lover, and winner of the Nokia Business Innovation Award, is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy. She is now working on a process to use waste plastic for steel making by smaller manufacturers in India.