E-Waste: Cash Rich, But Challenges Galore

At about 3.2 million tonne (MT) annually, India is currently the third-largest producer of e-waste in the world after China and the USA.

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): Electronic waste (e-waste) management firms are grappling with a unique duality in their business. While the segment is seeing a positive funding sentiment thanks to the regulatory tailwinds on the one hand, it is dealing with challenges money cannot solve permanently on the other hand.

Various e-waste management firms that FE spoke to pointed out that given the nascent state of the sector and the need for rapid scaling up in the processing of e-waste, the main challenge is to find viable and sustainable solutions to issues like reverse logistics and safety. According to industry executives, companies in the sector have raised around $100 million in the last year.

“It’s a land grab when it comes to funding, but the industry is at a very nascent stage and the challenges that need to be addressed require extensive R&D. I would say this is the time to invest in research and development, and take the lead in innovations,” Shubham Vishwakarma, founder and chief of process engineering at Metastable Materials, said.

At about 3.2 million tonne (MT) annually, India is currently the third-largest producer of e-waste in the world after China and the USA. According to the global industry analysis body Astute Analytics, the market size for e-waste management in India was $1.6 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach a valuation of $5.2 billion by 2032, rising at a CAGR of 13.52%.

 The headroom for growth in the sector is one of the main attractions for investors. “Although with a higher installed capacity, India recycles just 25% of its e-waste, but with the recent policy momentum from the government’s side, the sector looks promising,” Prashant Singh, co-founder and CEO, Blue Planet Environmental Solutions, said. He added that he is optimistic and sees enormous potential as stronger compliance measures are now driving the e-waste sector towards getting better organised and thus facilitating significant growth.

In other words, only 25% of the e-waste produced is being processed, and players can make a play to capture the remaining with the right investments and innovations. This headroom for growth, along with the e-waste rules of 2022, makes the segment ripe for funding.

Apart from the battery waste from EVs, e-waste also consists of smaller ticket personal accessories and these, combined with waste from other electronics like home appliances, are expected amount to 5 MT of e-waste by 2030. 

Singh and his peers agree that the biggest challenge is finding an efficient and viable model in reverse logistics. “The disposal process can be initiated from end-consumer residences, retail outlets & institutional/business houses and can involve single or multiple units based on the origin. This is logistically complex and costly, while adhering to various environmental regulations,” Abhishek Deshpande, co-founder and COO, Recykal, said.

One of the solutions that Recykal offers is a marketplace where aggregators and recyclers can buy and sell high-quality plastic, metal, paper and e-waste recyclables with consistent supply, reliable quality and quick payments. 

For e-waste management firm Attero, its scale has helped it deploy an incentive-based initiative Selsmart through which it buys the electronic scrap from end consumers, destroys the data at its facility, and then segregates it for further processing. “We currently process 100 orders a day and aim to reach 1,000 orders a day by Diwali. Given our scale, we have found a sustainable business model in Selsmart that works for us, and we are open to partnering with peers. We see the potential to reach `1,000 crore in revenue by the end of three years from launch,” Nitin Gupta, CEO and Co-founder of Attero, said.

He elaborated that reaching critical scale was important for the model to work and expects it to help collect 140, 000 MT of e-waste by the third year. For the rest, it is not so simple. 

Smaller players may need to wait for an industry-wide solution that will help formalise e-waste collection. Till then, they continue to be dependant on aggregators like the local junk collector or junkyard owner. On the safety front, the startups are looking at technical innovations which will make recycling more environment- and worker-friendly. “Automation and robotics investments have increased. These help reduce human exposure to hazardous materials,” Deshpande observed. Players like Attero are looking at replacing hazardous metals like lead from the recycling process with more environment-friendly and effective compounds.

Courtesy: www.msn.com

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