Noida : Marking an important step toward preventing the country’s e-waste problems, Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT), the apex body actively representing ICT Manufacturing, Training, IT, Design, R&D and associated services sector conducted a formal workshop on “E-Waste Rules for Bulk Consumers” in partnership with the Ministry of Environment & Forests and the Central Pollution Control Board and Dataserv APAC in Uttar Pradesh, Noida today. Mr. Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director, MAIT, welcomed the gathering at the event and stressed the need for upscaling of e-waste re-cycling and disposal to create widespread awareness amongst Indians.

Highlighting the various provisions for E-waste rules, Dr. Chhanda Chowdhury, Director, Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India, said, “Electronics industry is growing exponentially, and with rapid advancements in technology and rise in demand and rate of technological obsolescence, we all face a new challenge of ewaste. Realising the concern, government of India has notified E-waste rules in 2011. Now, the main challenge is how to bring informal sector into the mainstream the E-waste management. These workshops organised in many states will help us create awareness about the e-waste management rules in  general and for bulk consumers in particular.”

While addressing the gathering, Mr Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director, MAIT, said, “India being a geographically complex country the task of creating awareness about E-waste is an exigent task. This workshop targets the bulk consumers with an aim of training organizations to spread wider awareness about e-waste management. This agenda can only be achieved if bulk consumers of electrical and electronic equipments accept their responsibility to follow the E-waste rules and channelize it through authorized collection centres or recyclers”.

The workshop also emphasized on the point that every bulk consumers shall maintain records of e-waste generated by them and make such records available for scrutiny by the State Pollution Control or the Pollution Control Committee.

Mr. Anand Kumar, Sr. Environment Engineer, CPCB, Mr. Ashish Chaturvedi, Sr. Technical Advisor GIZ, Mr. Sanjay Kumar, Deputy Chief Materials Manager, Nothern Railway, Ms. Ritu Ghosh, Manager – Government Advisory, Hewlett Packard India, Mr. Rajesh Chawla, DGM – ITSS, State Bank of India, Mr. Amit Sardana, Managing Director, Dataserv APAV graced the event and addressed the issues & challenges for effective implementation of E-Waste rules.