Achitra Borgohain was shifting houses in Bengaluru and realised that he had accumulated a lot of junk over the years: geysers and an old computer were some of the detritus he needed to get rid of.
And so began a quest for someone who would ensure that all his hazardous e-waste would be disposed of. He started scouting for authorised recyclers and local scrap dealers. While the former said collecting small quantities would not be viable, the latter was ready to come only at their convenient time.
“I finally dumped everything in my car and drove to one of the collection centres and disposed of the waste,” said Borgohain, recalling the incident that triggered the idea of setting up BinBag, a startup that stepped in as a link between e-waste generators and recyclers in 2014. In 18 months since, the small team has managed to cater to 3,000 customers and making 30 tonnes of e-waste reach authorised recyclers.
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Though waste management is a complex subject as a whole, electronic waste is something people woke up to more recently. In India, consumers are known to use items for longer periods before terming them “waste”. However, that does not translate into lesser e-waste in the country.
According to a 2016 study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry of India and Frost & Sullivan, India generates around 18.5 lakh MT of electronic waste annually, and this number is likely to reach up to 30 lakh MT per year by 2018. Mumbai tops the list in generating e-waste (1,20,000 MT per year), followed New Delhi-NCR (98,000 MT) and Bengaluru (92,000 MT).
In Bengaluru, which is still struggling to get its citizens to segregate wet and dry waste, breaking down dry waste further into e-waste and other categories is no easy task. Coupled with the lack of easy access to recyclers who take back what is of little value to people presented the danger of hazardous e-waste entering into landfills.
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“There are many authorised e-waste dismantlers and recyclers. The unavailability of recyclers is not the problem. It boils down to ensuring an efficient supply chain, which is where we stepped in. We work on the principle that the garbage problem is largely a supply-chain problem — high cost of transportation coupled with mixed waste — making it unviable to recycle at the processors’ end. BinBag’s model works on a decentralised, hyper-local management of dry waste, including e-waste, for consumers by leveraging technology,” he said.
Having been incubated at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore’s N.S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, the venture initially reached out to people with a unique proposal: offering gifts and rewards in return for e-waste. Subsequently, BinBag has moved on to servicing apartment complexes, working on a “subscription” model by making periodic visits for an annual fee, and doing away with the one-to-one model.
The 2016 study also pointed out that computer equipment accounted for almost 70% of e-waste material followed by telecommunication equipment (12%), electrical equipment (8%) and medical equipment (7%). In addition, it said government, public and private industries contribute more than 70% of e-waste, while 15% comes from households. Incidentally, Bengaluru is known as the ‘IT capital’ of India, which is also a reminder of how much e-waste it can potentially generate.
BinBag makes a small contribution towards this, collecting around 4 to 6 tonnes of e-waste every month. “Most of it would be typical household e-waste...wires, chargers, phones, and in some instances microwaves or laptops. About 90%, by weight, of it is recyclable. The rest goes to the landfill after detoxification. In advanced nations with more sophisticated technologies, recovery rate would be much higher — up to 98% by weight,” Mr. Borgohain explained.
From this year, the initiative also expanded its operations to all kinds of dry waste, including e-waste, catering to two wards as a Dry Waste Collection Centre under the BBMP.