Review: Current status of recycling of waste printed circuit boards in India

摘要

Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) are an integral part of any electronic equipment. The growth in electronic goods combined with a rapid rate of obsolescence is producing end-of-life electronic equipment or e-waste at an exponential rate, thereby producing large quantities of discarded PCBs. Concerns about e-waste began to mount after investigations by several environmental groups such as the Basel Action Network (BAN), the Silicon Valley Toxicity Coalition (SVTC), Greenpeace and Toxics Links, revealing that e-waste is being illegally brought into India and other developing countries by misleadingly labeling it as metal scrap or second hand computers. An absence of any specific law regulating e-waste till now, lax environmental standards and cheap labor has made India an attractive site for recycling. In India, currently PCBs recycling and processing is managed almost entirely by the informal sector or the unskilled labor force (95%) and is purely market driven. It is a source of livelihood for unorganized recyclers. The crude recycling activities cause irreversible health and environmental hazards and also loss of valuable materials due to the poor recovery of base and precious metals.