Incorporate electronic-waste policy in sustainable growth: expert

Delivering the inaugural address here on Thursday on ‘challenges in e-waste’ at a two-day national seminar on electronic waste (NASEW-10) organized by the National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML), Usha Dar, director, research & consultancy, World Environment Foundation (WEF), a leading London-based NGO, said any e-waste policy and legislation should be considered within the framework policies of models such as ‘Proactivate’, which go for concrete action by creating a positive mood which motivates people to understand the necessary efforts required to achieve the goal of a living planet.

‘Proactivate’, an 11-point model of growth, developed, discussed and filtered at various workshops and conferences organised by the UK-based World Council for Corporate Governance and WEF, addresses the issue of “what we can do to avert the apocalypse” by questioning the way we live and work and provides alternatives that are easy to implement.

Dar, who is in-charge of WEF’s Indian operations, said as the European Union (EU) had treated e-waste as a standalone subject and not as an integral part of sustainable development, chances of its success were limited.

Concerns relating to e-waste include the export of second-hand computers and wrongly certified ‘fit for recycling’ computers to India and other developing countries as a recent US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on electronic waste stated that US hazardous waste regulations had not deterred exports of potentially hazardous

... contd.