Electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) has become increasingly important in our daily lives as a result of scientific and technological developments over the past few decades. Even Nevertheless, the current rates of e-waste consumption, landfilling, and manufacturing are unsustainable. Use of electrical and electronic equipment as a whole has increased to 2.5 million tons. Electronics with batteries and cords, such laptops, radios, phones, and even certain children’s toys, contribute to the mountain of discarded e-waste. Even though the total amount is growing, relatively few people actually recycle, therefore more greenhouse gases and dangerous compounds are being released during unofficial recycling. Not only do countries with poorer economies and standards of living struggle with waste management, but so do countries with higher standards of living. Recovering valuable resources from trashed goods has become a source of income for many business owners and individuals. In most cases, no formal safety or health regulations are in place, and sorting and recycling are done in an informal or fairly unscientific manner. Many groups are giving serious thought to the issue, and they all share a desire for a flawless legislative policy and substantial investment in cutting-edge technology and recycling equipment.
Global Challenges and Scenario
There is now a 20-30% recycling rate for e-waste worldwide, with a collection rate of 50-60%. By the end of 2019, the world had produced 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste. In the same year, China overtook Japan as the world’s largest producer of e-waste, with an annual output of roughly 10 million metric tons. According to Statista, the United States comes in second with roughly seven million metric tons.
The global interconnections between developing, developed, and lower economic countries make waste electrical and electronic equipment management (WEEE) a pressing issue in the solid waste management industry. The current challenge of e-waste management, set against the backdrop of sustainable development, is to transfer the pattern to a workable resource, shifting it from a poisonous contamination site.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle (3R policy), waste prevention, and landfill awareness are at the top of the waste hierarchy. E-waste has been designated as its own trash category thanks to stringent legal protections. The European Union (EU) has adopted a policy that promotes the circular economy by treating trash as resources and enacting legislation for a recycling society. Due to the extended lifespan of electronic products and lesser purchasing power, especially in rural regions, countries like Romania that are part of the 2012/19/EU cannot satisfy the trash collection rate of 45 percent required by the WEEE Directive.
Waste streams from rich countries are either shipped to developing nations or dumped in landfills because of the complexity of environmental rules and regulations, the high cost of labor, and a lack of adequate modern facilities. As stated in the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, it is illegal to ship hazardous materials to nations with weaker economies. National waste policies in developed countries limit landfill use to encourage recovery and recycling.
Western and European recyclers tend to focus on consumer goods that are hard on the eyes. There is a severe lack of recyclers for consumer durables. Western recycling methods are distinct from eastern ones because of the high cost of labor and the push toward automation, both of which result in more material and metal loss during the recycling process. Both resource extraction and production are significantly lower than in India. The European Union advocates for the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which places the onus of e-waste management and recycling on manufacturers and importers of EEE rather than municipal governments. Many developing countries, like Nigeria, Cambodia, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Pakistan, have severe restrictions on the import of e-waste, while others, including Benin, Cote D’Ivoire, Kenya, Liberia, Senegal, Uganda, South Africa, and India, have not even given the issue much thought.
“Researchers think there are dozens of hurdles, but the imperative one is insufficient regulations that can be enforced efficiently,” Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research, told CircuitDigest exclusively. In order to effectively combat electronic waste, all stakeholders must work together. Insufficient knowledge of and reliance on available technology also provide obstacles. In the smartphone industry, for instance, companies that have adopted the recovery, refurbishment, and recycling of used devices are not only helping to expand their customer base, but they are also significantly lowering the embedded energy cost per year, per smartphone.
State-of-the-art recycling solutions supported by cutting-edge technology and contemporary technologies, as well as the establishment of more facilities, are needed. There is now little attention paid to collecting electronic garbage, another area where technology can be useful. Help is on the way if we can melt down the printed circuit boards and recycle the metals. More usage of biological technologies and the application of AI in the sorting of e-waste will be of great assistance.
E-Wastes Scenario in India
The informal economy in India is responsible for the vast majority of e-waste collecting and recycling efforts. Last year, experts said that after China and the United States, the country ranked third in terms of creating e-waste. At the end of 2019, these three countries accounted for 38% of the world’s total e-waste, or 13.6 million metric tons. One of the main problems is that in the informal economy, unskilled laborers do all the work of disposing, recycling, sorting, and disassembling e-waste by hand. Another key factor contributing to wastes being discarded with rubbish is a general lack of education about the dangers of doing so. Dump collectors then collect these wastes to sell to scrap dealers. The latter then sells it to recycling companies, many of which use antiquated methods and equipment.
About 3.2 million metric tons of electronic garbage are produced annually in India, but only about 10-20 percent of that is collected. In the United States, you can find one of 412 recyclers. The country’s first e-waste legislation were passed in 2011, and the first extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws were passed in 2016. The manufacturers were then given a formula-based goal for the collecting of obsolete goods. More than 1,500 farmers and ranchers have signed up for EPR Licenses. The current mission is to amass consumer e-waste. Thus, these resources come from Producers Responsibility Organizations (PROs) or approved recyclers.
“The collection of waste is key because there are two types of products; volumetric and non-volumetric,” A L N Rao, CEO of Exigo Recycling, told CircuitDigest exclusively. The former are simple to relocate anywhere in the country, whereas the latter present a logistical nightmare. This is because recycling plants are typically run by families and are concentrated in specific regions. This makes transporting bulky items quite costly. Producers are engaging in viability gap finance (VGF) to guarantee achievement of their EPR goals.
The exact number of e-waste stockpiles is unknown because there is currently no nationwide inventory system in place. About 40-50% of all electronics sold in India are bought by government agencies. The GOI, through its many departments, sells the garbage to whoever will pay the most money for it, which is bad news for the recycling industry. Large users such as financial institutions, software developers, and multinational corporations often sell their trash to the highest bidder. There is, therefore, a significant amount of material leaking into the refurbishment market or the informal economy.
Deployment of Technology in the Global E-Waste Sector
There is a pressing need to scientifically and efficiently recycle our growing mountain of electronic garbage. The term “recycling” refers to the practice of separating various substances into their component parts before selling the extracted materials as raw materials for the production of brand new products. Proper extraction from these wastes is not a simple operation, which is why cutting-edge technology is essential.
Recent efforts by the Singapore CEA Alliance for Research in the Circular Economy (SCARCE) have resulted in a new technique that, by combining chemical extraction operations in solution with a mechanical mechanism for automating sorting and disassembly, will increase recycling rates. In order to reduce costs and shorten development times, microfluidics have been incorporated into a single tiny device. Microfluidics makes it simple to analyze the complex chemical element exchanges that occur at the water/oil interface. In reality, porous membranes allow for precise regulation of the oil-and-water exchange surface. Microfluidics allows for precise material flow calculations.
Now, the IIT Madras has launched a novel platform called e-Source to address the e-waste problem by bringing together multiple stakeholders from the informal and formal sectors. This has the potential to restore order to the logistics supply chain and facilitate the annual recycling of 53.6 million tons of electronic waste. This trading platform will serve as a virtual marketplace for WEEE, connecting suppliers and consumers in a transparent and orderly fashion.
Despite the existence of EPR legislation and programmes, Counterpoint Research claims that regulatory frameworks for home e-wastes are not properly maintained in Malaysia and other Asian countries. In order to ensure the long-term viability of smart city ideas, experts in Malaysia believe that the e-waste generated by individual households must be effectively managed. To overcome this obstacle, an intelligent household e-waste collecting box outfitted with e-waste level measuring sensors was developed and installed. Now, a server in the back coordinates the collection schedule and tells the e-waste collectors automatically when the box is 80% full. In fact, a mobile app was released at the same time. This is a perfect illustration of how advanced technology may assist each nation regulate and recycle its e-waste.
How AI and IoT Could be a Game-Changer in E-waste Management and Recycling
Smart trash management and recycling using AI is one solution to the growing mountain of electronic waste, and the advent of this technology is expected to pave the way for a more efficient way to dispose of and recycle electronic waste in the long run. In 2011, ZenRobotics, a Finnish company, began employing AI for intelligent recycling in order to regulate e-waste through the use of a robotic trash sorter. Synchronized trials are carried out by the robots using a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer vision to gather recyclables from the moving conveyor belts. Since then, there has been a rise in support for using cutting-edge technology to recycle garbage.
Artificial intelligence reads the garbage tag to determine the type of trash, and then the data is transferred to the proper server for processing. The actual or primary server then compares the various waste categories and decides on the most effective means of recycling or disposal. The trash is then recycled or disposed of in an environmentally responsible manner.
Another novel approach to dealing with e-waste is the use of a smart or intelligent traschcan equipped with Internet of Things sensors and artificial intelligence software. The garbage cans may be equipped with Internet of Things sensors that can determine how much trash has been thrown inside. This information is transferred to the actual disposal system with the help of intermediary servers for processing. Each type of trash and its volume can be determined using this system, as can the appropriate disposal method.
