Junked mobile phones top e-waste heap

Clean Kerala Company Ltd, an initiative of the Kerala Government for managing solid waste, is planning to take on e-waste piling up in the State, which has a high density of mobile phones, computers, and other electronic gadgets.

“We are planning to set up collection counters in municipal towns and cities for accepting junked electronic gadgets,” says Haroon B. Kabeer, who last month took over as managing director of the Clean Kerala Company Ltd.

Kabeer said Kerala is fast becoming a junkyard of e-waste and that as of now, there is no system in place to address the problem.

Mobile phones have recently emerged as a major e-waste as the number of mobile phones in use is very high in Kerala. Since nearly a tenth of Kerala’s population lives outside Kerala, they bring in ever-new international brands of smartphones, thus making those already in use outdated and thus junked. There is also a huge gray market for used phones whose customers mostly are the large population of migrant labourers from the Northeast.

Kabeer said laptop penetration, again due to the heavy arrivals from abroad, is also very high and laptop users frequently went for newer and better models, thus making the junking rate high. He said the company would collect the junked e-gadgets at the counters and sell them to companies specializing in recycling e-waste.

He noted that the company, promoted by the Department of Urban Affairs, had recently launched an ambitious project to collect plastic waste, which makes up close to a tenth of municipal solid waste, and reuse it in road building.

“Using shredded plastic waste in paving roads serves two purposes,” Kabeer said. “First, it will reduce environmental hazard from plastics which are non-biodegradable; and two, it will prolong the life of Kerala’s roads which are battered by the monsoon rains for many months every year.”

The company would soon set up nearly 1000 plastic shredding units across the State which would make use of the plastic waste collected by Kudumbashree (women’s economic self-help groups) units. The shredded plastics would be sold to the Public Works Department which would initially use it to pave the municipal roads, and later on the village roads.

Already, the PWD has agreed to use the shredded plastics to build 50 km of municipal roads. Placs could replace around 10 per cent of bitumen use.

A study by the Central Pollution Control Board had shown that polymer-coated bitumen would double the strength of the roads and prolong their lifetime. One km length of road would require around one tonne of shredded plastics.

Kabeer said the 26 per cent of the company’s stakes was with the State government. The rest would be taken up by municipalities, city corporations and public-sector companies and agencies. He hoped the company could break even in a couple of years.

basheer.kpm@thehindu.co.in

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