Impact of E-waste on Economic and Environmental Aspect of Developing Countries

Huge amount of electronic goods are produced by the society and thus the electronic waste or e-waste. Environmental program of United Nations has given warning in its report regarding dangerous rise in the amount of such waste that is mostly dumped in developing countries and poses serious health hazards. E-waste creates economic, environmental problem for developing nations.

Electronic waste disposal and Electronic recycling

Each year, the world creates around 40 million tons of electronic waste from various items like TVs, refrigerators, cell phones and computers. This figure is constantly rising. By the year 2020, it is expected that China will throw around seven times more cell phones as of now and India will throw eighteen times more. Such high - technology goods are quite bulky and usually contain toxic materials like lead and mercury. Thus, it is essential to dispose e-waste properly to avoid pollution and health hazards.

E-waste companies focus on trade in toxic goods, specifically waste goods. World needs essential measures to end the toxic waste. The things have started becoming waste much faster than earlier. Now days, computers have a life span of around two years in the North, several mobile phones get turn off within six months due to launch of new models in the market. Thus, a mountain of e-waste is created by the society.

There is urgent need to remove the toxic materials out of the equation. The issue of e-waste is one of the biggest topics which is being discussed at the United Nation program for Environment’s conference in Nusa Dua, Indonesia. Most of the e-waste must be recycled. There are not only environmental reasons but also economic incentive behind it. For an example, three percent of gold and silver which mined in the world is being used for creating personal computers and mobile phones.

By starting investment and recycling as well as reuse of such materials, you can start sorting out problems and converting them into opportunities. You will start creating jobs, reducing the amount of metals and reusing them. Thus, these are advantages for managing the electronic waste in the industrialized countries to least developed countries of the world without legislation.

The United States is a single largest developer of e-waste. E-waste now has also become highly profitable illegal trade. Few companies remove their trash thereby exporting the same to the poor countries, where it is recycled. It is also sometimes piled up in landfills and the toxic materials pollute the water and soil.

In West Africa, obsolete cars are exported and then cars are stuffed with absolute computers that are hidden in cars. Thus, there are several ingenious schemes to do it. It can be compared with arms smuggling and drug smuggling as incentives are financial and huge business can be done with the same.

The problem has been doubled with the increasing complexity of the trade. E-waste is usually produced by the developed nations and dumped into the poor countries. Today, poor nations not having recycling ability usually export their e-waste to the countries like China. Emerging economies have increasingly become net producers of e-waste. China is regarded as second largest producer of e-waste after United States.

It is main responsibility of a country to adopt legislation and also enforce the same. The actual problem is that it needs large amount of money. Even highly developed nations like European Union do not possess essential resources for preventing illegal exports of e-waste.

Electronic waste is lot more than just a problem. It also disturbs the health of millions of people who earn by stripping out waste that is dumped in their nations. Experts of environment say that new funds and manpower is required for solving the actual problem via establishing the safe recycling facilities and curbing the illegal exports.

The problem of electronic waste is rapidly increasing via increased production of electronics and exportation of e-waste from the developed nations to the developing countries just because of the profitable economic incentives which are achieved through this process. The total amount of e-waste generated has touched the figure of around 41 million ton in the year 2014 and is increasing at the rate of 3-5% each year.

BRP infotech Pvt. Ltd. is a popular e-waste recycling companies in India which recycles the electronic goods through recycling process. It has vision to protect and conserve the environment by recycling the electronics. It applies most effective ways and creates maximum benefits of recycling with use of efficient methods.