E waste – II: India

India is the world’s third-largest generator of e-waste, after China and the United States.¹ In 2019-20, India generated 1.01 million metric tonnes (MT) of e-waste.² By 2023-24, that figure had jumped to 1.751 million MT—a staggering 73% increase in just five years.³

To put this in context: we’re generating e-waste at a rate that’s nearly doubled in less than half a decade. 65 Indian cities generate more than 60% of India’s total e-waste.⁴ Ten states account for 70% of the national total.⁴ States like Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Telangana, and Uttarakhand have each collected and processed over 400,000 tonnes between 2016-17 and 2023-24.⁵

In 2019-20, India recycled just 22% of its e-waste.³ By 2023-24, that figure had climbed to 43%.³ Formal collection capacity expanded significantly over this period — though these figures are contested, given documented issues with EPR certificate fraud.⁵ However, 57% of e-waste (equivalent to 990,000 MT) still goes untreated every year.³ CSE’s Siddharth Ghanshyam Singh has said, “The recycling rate for e-waste remains low due to the authorities’ inability to effectively engage the various stakeholders involved.”³

Over 90% of e-waste in India is handled by the informal sector—untrained workers in urban slums who use rudimentary, dangerous processes without protective equipment.⁶ These processes include:⁷

• Open burning of cables to recover copper, releasing toxic fumes
• ​Acid baths to extract precious metals, contaminating water and soil
• ​Manual dismantling without safety gear, exposing workers to heavy metals
• Heating circuit boards over open flames to melt solder

The workers—often including children—are directly exposed to lead, mercury, cadmium, brominated flame retardants, and other toxins.⁸ The health consequences are severe: respiratory problems, neurological damage, kidney damage, developmental issues in children, and various cancers.⁸ Pollutants leach into surrounding communities’ air, water, soil, and food.⁷ Studies show that e-waste workers experience far greater health impacts than nearby residents, but even bystanders suffer from the pollution.⁸

Yet this informal sector persists because there’s money in it.⁶ Scrap dealers offer cash for old electronics; formal collection infrastructure is limited; and public awareness of proper disposal methods is low.⁹ A 2022 study of consumers in semi-urban Tamil Nadu found that while 76% scored well on a general six-question e-waste awareness composite, only 40.5% were even familiar with the term ‘e-waste’ itself — and 79.4% were entirely unaware of the e-waste legislation and rules in India. The gap between general awareness and specific, actionable knowledge has real consequences.⁹

How do people actually dispose of e-waste? The study revealed:⁹​

• 35% give their e-waste to scrap dealers (who often operate in the informal sector)
• 21% dispose of it with regular household waste
• Smaller percentages engage in proper recycling or collection programs

Anecdotally, I have noticed a fourth behaviour, which is to store old devices at home for lack of a better option to dispose of them properly. I do use my old phone as an alarm clock these days. My mother uses hers as a reading device. ​

The reasons for this behavior are clear: lack of convenient collection points, insufficient awareness of formal systems, and the absence of economic incentives.¹¹ When people do dispose of electronics, they often choose the path of least resistance—the scrap dealer who comes to the door, or the trash bin.⁹

EPR
If e-waste is valuable, dangerous, and growing, the obvious question is why it’s still handled so poorly. The short answer is incentives.¹⁰ The long answer is that we’ve built systems that reward disposal, speed, and convenience—while making responsible recycling slow, confusing, or invisible.¹⁰

EPR is one of the most interesting environmental policies I’ve worked around, and is based on a simple principle: entities that place products on the market are made responsible for managing those products at end of life.¹¹ Electronics are considered well suited to EPR because producers are identifiable, products are traceable, and end-of-life impacts are significant.¹¹

Electronics contain hazardous materials that impose real public health and environmental costs when improperly handled.⁷⁸ At the same time, they contain valuable recoverable materials.¹¹ Without regulation, neither cost nor value is fully reflected in product pricing or business decisions. EPR attempts to internalise these externalities by shifting responsibility upstream—from municipalities and informal workers to producers.¹¹

In theory, a well‑designed EPR system for e‑waste should deliver several linked outcomes:¹²

• Reduce unsafe disposal: By making producers responsible for collection and treatment, the policy aims to move waste out of dumps, open burning and backyard acid leaching, and into controlled facilities that meet environmental and occupational standards.
• Increase recycling rates: Targets and obligations should push more material into authorised collection and recycling channels, improving national recycling performance relative to the global average.
• Encourage better product design: When end‑of‑life costs show up on producers’ balance sheets, they have reasons to reduce hazardous substances, design for disassembly, and extend product lifetimes through durability and reparability.¹¹
• Create stable financing: EPR fees, take‑back schemes, and producer responsibility organisations are meant to provide predictable funding for collection, transportation, recycling, and public awareness, instead of leaving municipalities and informal workers to absorb the costs.

On paper, this makes sense. In practice, it’s messy.

In India, producers meet EPR obligations largely through recycling certificates—essentially buying proof that someone, somewhere, recycled an equivalent amount of e-waste.¹³ This has improved formal recycling capacity, but it hasn’t meaningfully displaced the informal sector.¹⁴ Why? Because informal recyclers are faster, cheaper, and embedded in neighborhoods.⁶ They pay cash at the doorstep. Formal systems require awareness, transport, and effort.⁶

(You can also read about the economics of remanufacturing here)

India’s E-Waste Management Rules 2022 cover 106 different electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) products and their components. The 2022 rules recognise the following categories of stakeholders:¹⁵

• Producers/Manufacturers: companies that make electronics for sale in India
• Importers: those who bring electronics into India for sale
• Bulk consumers: public institutions, offices, companies that generate large volumes of e-waste
• Collection centers: authorized facilities for gathering e-waste from consumers
• Recyclers: certified facilities that process e-waste using environmentally sound methods
• Refurbishers: operations that repair and restore used electronics for resale

All these entities must register on a central portal developed by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). Operating without registration is illegal.

Working smarter, not harder¹⁶
Kabadiwalas already operate the country’s most efficient reverse-logistics network. They have neighborhood-level reach, established trust, real-time pricing, and cash-based incentives that formal systems lack. Instead of trying to replace this network, policy should aim to formalize, standardize, and economically align it with safe recycling outcomes.

The core idea is simple: kabadiwalas should be treated as licensed collection and aggregation agents within the EPR framework. Producers would be mandated to route a fixed share of their collection targets through registered informal collectors. In return, kabadiwalas receive predictable payments for verified collection volumes—separate from the resale value of scrap—creating a financial incentive to hand material over to authorised recyclers rather than processing it themselves.

Today, informal workers earn more by dismantling, burning, or chemically processing electronics than by merely collecting them. Any incentive system that ignores this reality will fail. The solution is to decouple income from hazardous processing by paying for collection and safe transfer, not extraction.

This can be achieved through a per-kilogram collection fee, funded by EPR levies, paid directly to registered kabadiwalas once material is delivered to certified aggregation centers. Higher fees can be offered for high-risk items like lithium-ion batteries, CRTs, and circuit boards. Over time, this shifts the profit center upstream—from toxic backyard processing to safe logistics—without destroying livelihoods.

Importantly, traceability should flow forward, not backward. Once e-waste enters a certified channel, downstream recyclers and producers carry responsibility for compliance. Kabadiwalas should not be punished for system failures beyond their control; they should be paid for verified inputs.

Also: incentives alone are not enough. Mandates must close the loopholes that currently allow producers to meet EPR obligations on paper while real waste leaks into informal streams.

Regulations should require that:

• A minimum percentage of e-waste collection occurs via registered decentralized collectors
• Producers demonstrate geographic coverage, not just aggregate tonnage
• Producers fund training, safety gear, and transition support for informal collectors they rely on

This forces formal systems to go where the waste actually is: homes, offices, and small businesses—not just bulk institutional sources.

This approach aligns incentives across the system:

• Kabadiwalas earn stable, safer income
• Producers meet real, verifiable EPR targets
• Formal recyclers get cleaner, higher-quality feedstock
• Cities and regulators reduce environmental and health damage without heavy enforcement

Most importantly, it acknowledges a basic truth: India does not lack recycling capacity—it lacks institutional pathways that convert existing economic behavior into safe outcomes. India’s e-waste crisis is not a failure of technology. It is a failure of incentives. Until policy rewards safe behavior as effectively as the informal market rewards unsafe extraction, the system will continue to leak toxicity.

The best part? Formal-informal partnership pilots in Delhi, Bangalore, and Pune, documented by GIZ in 2017, established that integration is operationally feasible. The document also reveals why this setup keeps failing: without mandatory EPR-linked financial flows from producers, these partnerships depend on goodwill and donor funding, and collapse once the initial support ends. The lesson isn’t that the model doesn’t work. It’s that it can’t be left to voluntary agreements.¹⁶

I worked on an e-waste project in 2013, and then on another one around 2018. The conversations hadn’t changed. The problems hadn’t changed. Even the language hadn’t changed. Everyone knew what wasn’t working — but the problems persisted. Incorporating the informal sector into the formal setup is one of the most inclusive and forward-looking steps the government can take, and it’s beyond time this was taken care of.

Sources

1. India Electronic Waste Recycling Market Size and Growth Report — PS Market Research
2. Managing India’s E-Scrap Is a Growing Challenge — Waste & Recycling Magazine
3. India’s E-Waste Surges by 73% in 5 Years — Down to Earth
4. Electronic Waste and India — Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY)
5. India’s E-Waste Generation Doubles in 8 Years, but Processing Remains Skewed — Dataful
6. Circular Economy and Household E-Waste Management in India: A Case Study on Informal E-Waste Collectors (Kabadiwalas) — Monash University
7. The Emerging Environmental and Public Health Problem of Electronic Waste in India — Environmental Health Perspectives
8. Health Consequences of Exposure to E-Waste — PMC / The Lancet
9. Consumer Awareness and Perceptions about E-Waste Management — PMC / Journal of Family and Community Medicine
10. Extended Producer Responsibility in Developing Economies — PMC
11. Extended Producer Responsibility: Basic Facts and Key Principles — OECD
12. Extended Producer Responsibility: Design, Functioning and Effects — PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
13. EPR Regulations in India: Rules, Importance and Guidelines — Attero
14. India’s E-Waste EPR Model — Toxics Link (February 2026)
15. E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022 — Central Pollution Control Board
16. Formal-Informal Partnerships in the Indian E-Waste Sector — GIZ (2017)