A Comprehensive Study on Electrical and Electronic Waste Management

Abstract

Electrical and electronic waste is scrap and generated out of various sources which include data processing equipment, household equipment, and other devices. These wastes of electrical and electronic equipment comprise several precious metals and toxic, heavy metals. In India, we generate over 50 million tons of E-waste each year excluding imports and it is expected that it would double up in the next few years. Over 90% of E-waste is recycled by methods like backyard recycling, open burning, and acid leaching. These primitive, informal methods can cause huge effects on the environment, and human health while the hazardous materials react with the atmosphere or water. Parallelly, in formal recycling, the materials of a different nature are sorted properly and treated with appropriate methods, as it does not affect our surroundings. Hence, this waste can be collected by setting campaigns and practicing extended producer responsibility or other take-back systems for formal recycling. Then, dismantled properly to reuse the precious metal and to cautiously recycle the toxic and radioactive metal with advanced methods like biological leaching, thermal plasma treatment, and converting it to energy. E-waste has a larger influence on the economy of our country, as it is composed of huge metal resources. Urban mining from electronic waste mitigates the need for mining plants to obtain metal ores. This study encompasses the best methods to dispose and recover electronic waste, its pros, and cons, and the impact of the electronic waste on our environment and well-being while disposed it to informal sectors or dumping it in landfills.