Cutting through the barriers

Recycling, when seen in a positive light, is a virtuous activity that preserves natural resources and avoids waste disposal or incineration. The act of recycling, however, can appear to be no different from waste handling or, when done improperly, can cause pollution and health problems.

On the Indian subcontinent, as in other parts of the world, the recycling industry can be viewed by the public through either of these two prisms.

How recycling is portrayed by India’s active media may well affect how it is regulated by Indian states and government agencies. The future of secondary commodity markets in India and neighbouring nations will depend on many economic factors, but policymakers likely will play a role also.
 

Ships and chips

Among the recycling sectors in India that have received considerable media attention are ship dismantling and the handling of obsolete electronics.

Ship dismantling has long been a high-tonnage source of ferrous scrap for mills and foundries in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Experienced dismantlers in the region even harvest steel plates and other shapes for distribution as finished steel at steel service centres in the region.

According to Nikos Mikelis, a nonexecutive director of Global Marketing Systems (GMS), based in Cumberland, Maryland, USA, global ship dismantling is highly concentrated in the Indian subcontinent. “Five countries (Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan and Turkey) recycle 97% to 98% of all recycled [scrapped vessel] tonnage,” Mikelis told Recycling Today in 2013.

Mikelis says ship dismantlers operating on the Indian subcontinent significantly have improved their attention to environmental and safety considerations. (See the January 2014 story, “Conventional Methods,” online at www.RecyclingToday.com/rt0114-environmentally-sound-ship-recycling.aspx.)

Nonetheless, media in India and throughout the world continue to scrutinize the practice. Shashank Agrawal, a vice president at Wirana Shipping Corp., Singapore, wrote an article for the August 2014 edition of USA-based Maritime Executive magazine touting the careful regulation of ship recycling now occurring in India.

“In India there are approximately 25 licensing bodies, and the industry is extremely regulated,” writes Agrawal of the 175 licensed ship dismantling operations along the Alang west coast in India’s state of Gujarat.

Agrawal addresses the importance of media coverage and makes a distinction between the archaic term of “ship breaking” versus the important secondary commodities that result from “ship recycling.” He writes, “More than 8,000 vessels have been scrapped at Alang since 1983, generating steel output in excess of 100 million tons. In an average year, Alang recycles about 350 to 400 vessels with annual sales from this activity of roughly $1.8 billion. Certainly ‘breaking’ would not generate this kind of income!”

While ship dismantlers may be gaining ground on the publicity front, electronics recyclers in India may have several contentious years of media coverage ahead.
 

Keep it clean

The e-scrap industry overall still can be portrayed in the media as unsafe and environmentally unsound harvesters of microchips and precious metals, and it is likely in the best interests of responsible electronics recyclers to weed out irresponsible players.

The summer of 2014 was not good in terms of media portrayals of the Indian electronics recycling sector. Among the headlines:

• “E-waste recycling turns water, soil toxic,” The Hindu, 28 July, 2014;
• “Shoddy e-waste recycling poisoning soil and water,” Times of India, 28 July, 2014;
• “Illegal e-waste recycling booms in Moradabad,” Times of India, 3 August, 2014; and
• “IPEN: Informal e-waste recycling polluting land and water in India,” Waste Management World, 14 August, 2014.

Much of the coverage stemmed from the release of a report by Toxics Link, based in New Delhi (http://toxicslink.org). The group’s “Impact of e-waste recycling on water and soil” report summarizes soil and water testing completed in two neighbourhoods in or near Delhi hosting electronic scrap dismantlers and processors.

The recycling operations taking place in the two neighbourhoods are characterised this way by the report’s authors: “The methodology, tools and techniques used for recycling e-waste in these units are basic, such as heating by blowtorch or stove, breaking with hammer, chemical stripping, melting and open burning, without any concern for the environment.”

Among the contaminants found in a water sample was “a mercury level [that] was almost 20 times higher than the desirable limit of Indian standards.”

Lead was widespread in soil. “The lead levels varied from 95.74 to 4,778 ppm (parts per million); 100% of the soil sample was found with very high lead levels as compared to the control sample (35.52 ppm). The highest lead level was almost 147 times higher than the control sample,” the report states.

Reforming the sector to take greater responsibility is on the mind of industry leaders, such as Peethambaram Parthasarathy, managing director of Bangalore, India-based E-Parisaraa Pvt. Ltd. E-Parisaraa operates electronics plants in India that have achieved R2 (Responsible Recycling Practices), ISO 14001:2004 and OHSAS 1B001:2007 certifications. (E-Parisaraa is profiled in the July-August 2014 edition of Recycling Today Global Edition in the story “Bold Pursuits,” available online at www.RecyclingToday.com/rtge0714-EParisaraa-electronics-recycling-profile.aspx.)

Parthasarathy says his company has been working with these “informal recyclers” to improve their operations to be in compliance with government and industry standards. “In Bangalore, workers at the informal sector companies we know of are now using masks and gloves. We are buying circuit boards from them at market rates so they stop burning the boards.”

Such safe practices, and many others, may not become more firmly entrenched for a number of years.
 

Taxes and fees

Nonferrous metals recyclers and consumers in India have been dealing with policy issue in the form of unwelcome and sometimes unpredictable import scrap duties.

The Metal Recycling Association of India (MRAI), Mumbai, which now has more than 400 members, was formed largely in response to what metals producers and recyclers viewed as the Indian government’s unhelpful use of import tariffs.

India, a nation with a scrap deficit, can benefit by using scrap materials in the production of aluminium, copper and brass, as well as steel and paper and containerboard.

In the nonferrous sector, import duties range from 2.5% to 5% on scrap, which can put Indian scrap buyers at a disadvantage when competing against buyers from China and other neighbouring nations.

At the MRAI’s August 2014 event in Mumbai, MRAI president Ikbal Nathani made a plea to the visiting Union Minster for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises of India Kalraj Mishra to help resolve the issue of burdensome tariffs.

Nathani pointed out that the global recycling industry directly employs more than 2 million people and annually processes more than 500 million tons of material. He said the Indian government should not put its nation’s recycling companies at a competitive disadvantage.

Mishra said he understood the MRAI position and would investigate it, according to a news report in the Mumbai Afternoon Despatch & Courier. “We wish to make India a manufacturing hub, and the problems of the metal recycling industry—which provides raw materials to medium and small enterprises—will surely be looked into,” pledged Mishra.

Should he make progress, it could help the nation’s metals producers and its entire economy significantly.

The author is editor of Recycling Today Global Edition and can be contacted via email at btaylor@gie.net.