In the past few days, several articles on lead and other heavy metals such as cadmium and chromium being found in soft drinks have appeared in the print and electronic media. These deeply disturbing findings remind me of my own unsettling experience which I want to share.
I arrived in New Delhi last year following my posting as Ambassador to Germany, and having spent a significant portion of the first several days settling down, managed to acquire a set of remote-controlled devices. As one would expect, the batteries went dead. I gathered them in a small plastic bag and headed to an electronics store in the neighbourhood hoping to deposit them in a recycling unit. Alas, I was too ambitious.
At a store at a mall, my quest struck the young store managers as something unusual. I quickly moved to another store, where the staff instantly assumed that I was attempting to cash in on some dead batteries. When I explained to them that what I was doing was simply out of environmental concerns, they were even more surprised.
In New Delhi, the rudimentary and inadequate separation of household waste does not hold up to the task of addressing the issue of tackling environmental challenges before this vast country. An effective e-waste disposal programme is a critical step in keeping the environment relatively safe and clean. This can be accomplished using a private-public partnership model. I’m confident that many of my colleagues representing developed countries will gladly share their knowledge and experience. This enterprise should become part of “Make in India”, “Smart cities”, and “Clean India”. .
Armen Martirosyan,
Ambassador of Armenia,
New Delhi
