Even as the Union government nudges local electronics manufacturing — such as the push for semiconductor fabrication projects and the Electronics Component Manufacturing Scheme — gaps have emerged in a critical sector that may grow more important in the coming years: e-waste recycling. Millions of tonne of consumer electronics and appliances have been disposed of in the recent years, and policymakers see extracting expensive and scarce metals and elements as key as electronics consumption is set to boom in the coming years.
While hundreds of millions of mobile phones are in use in India, with TRAI pegging the number of mobile broadband connections in excess of 93.9 crore as per the latest count, India constitutes a relatively small portion, about 4%, of overall global electronics consumption.
As global supply chains for these electronics remain fragile, the government has nevertheless pushed to expand indigenous manufacturing capacity, as well as efforts on the raw materials side, with a ₹1,500 mineral recycling scheme announced in early September.
Recycling elements like copper, aluminium, nickel, cobalt, as well as lithium, have shown growing importance, with the Union government in recent years introducing an “extended producer responsibility” (EPR) framework for appliances and electronics to be collected by the original manufacturers, for harvesting materials that are expensive to procure from the open market, or suffer from geopolitical risks, like China’s decision earlier this year to restrict exports of rare earth elements (REEs).
A 2023 report by the Indian Cellular and Electronics Association pointed out to a key hurdle in creating a “circular economy” for such products — where metals and elements from so-called end-of-life products can be reintroduced into the supply chain — is “largely dominated by the informal sector”.
These informal setups have frustrated policymakers, as they focus on repairing products by harvesting components from used goods, and operate outside any formal framework that can eventually lead to recycling being a viable source of key raw materials for manufacturing firms to consider. Even within the government’s EPR framework, accusations of “paper trading” abound, with recyclers allegedly overstating the goods they’re recycling to win incentive payments.
“Some of the players are indulging in malpractices to earn financial benefits without having either the capability or the capacity for metal extraction, which needs to be exposed,” Sandip Chatterjee, an adviser to think tank Sustainable Electronics Recycling International (SERI), who worked on e-waste issues for decades at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, told The Hindu. These copper, steel, gold and aluminium extracting operations need “third party auditing to ensure best practices on environmental safe guarding, [and] due diligence of downstream vendors for fate of those materials till their disposal,” Dr. Chatterjee added.
Dr. Chatterjee also said that “material traceability” was a huge problem, since irregularities (or impossibility) in inventorying products floating around in informal markets and even registered recyclers is hampering visibility into what products can actually be recycled and used in products. Dr. Chatterjee also pushed for repairing products more and prolonging their life as a measure in e-waste management. But even there, he said, it was important for there to be visibility into the life cycle of individual products.
The inventorying is critical to develop, as western countries count a product sold as potential e-waste as soon as it is sold, unlike in India, where gadgets may go through multiple owners before wearing out beyond repair. “Presently, inventory has been trusted to State Pollution Control Boards,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “They never use a uniform method suited to India, and international figures of e-waste generation are always different.”
But the statistics as they are still represent major volumes. Dr. Chatterjee cited an estimate of 4.17 million metric tonne of e-waste being generated in 2022 alone in India, and said that only one third of this waste is processed through “proper channels”.
Nitin Gupta, founder of Attero, an electronics recycling firm, said that the Central Pollution Control Board, which operates the portal recyclers use, “has started carrying out audits of various recyclers in the last five months,” and that over 50 firms were audited, with those showing discrepancies being acted against.
Attero has established a large metals recycling operation, aggregating even informal set-ups into a “mandi” style stream. While the current proportion of recycled precious metals and rare-earths in domestic supply chains is “negligible,” as per Mr. Gupta, he asserted that with the right policy push, “India can meet 70% of its rare earth materials requirements in the next 18 months.”
The “percentage of how much impact recycling has had, has been improving year on year,” Mr. Gupta added. “In India, gold, copper, aluminium and steel are majorly recovered,” Dr. Chatterjee said.
Published – September 29, 2025 08:04 pm IST