Pollution board to translate e-waste management rules

Kolkata: The West Bengal Pollution Control Board is trying to create an inventory of e-waste generated in the state and suggested that IIT-Kharagpur could work with the regulator to make this happen. “The Union ministry of environment and forest & climate change have notified the eWaste Management Rules in 2016. We are working towards implementing it at the state level. But we have no data on e-waste. We need to see the nature of e-waste the state produces, its characteristics, etc. So IIT-Kharagpur could help us,” WBPCB chairman Kalyan Rudra said on the sidelines of a workshop on e-Waste Management organised by Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry in association with Progress Harmony Development Chamber and MOEF & CC.

According to Mr Rudra, the Board is now working on translating the e-waste management rules into Bengali for convenience and public awareness. “We need to create awareness among the informal sector about e-waste management. The infrastructure is virtually bad in the informal sector where the manufacturing units lack facilities like mask and other components. We are doing worskshops at the district level and are holding meetings with the 127 urban local bodies across the state to make them aware of e-waste management rules,” Mr Rudra said. Basab Chakraborty, assistant professor, Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship, who was present at the workshop, said one could take stock of the e-waste produced in an organisation-specific basis by cataloguing the number of PCs discarded in a year etc.