The Waste Festival demonstrated how effectively waste can be put to use.
To demonstrate how effectively waste can be put to use, a group of youngsters organised a ‘Waste festival’ at Fergusson College on Monday. Covering performance in a ‘garbage musical’, a fashion show out of waste materials and an exhibition of utility items made out of discarded material, the show aimed to create awareness on the need to ‘refuse’ the items in our life that we do not require.
A ‘rock’ band performed with discarded wooden boxes, television monitors, compact discs and used plastic bottles while young students from the third year Arts degree course walked down the ramp dressed in old newspapers and skirts decorated with flashy CDs. Hrishikesh, the coordinator of the festival, a third year BA student, who also prefers to be known as WiFi, said, “The aim is to create awareness about waste management — especially the safe disposal of electronic waste.”
The Social Outreach and Enabling Centre of Fergusson College, as part of the Kirloskar Vasundhara festival, conducted the festival along with the Environmental Sciences department. Ashwinova, another third year BA student at Fergusson College, said that the focus is also on electronic waste and how it should be handled. According to Aishwarya Joshi, from the Social Outreach and Enabling Centre, the aim for waste management is to reduce, reuse and recycle. But why can’t we ‘refuse’ the items that we do not require, the students asked, through their unique display at the festival.
There is no comprehensive and updated inventory of e-waste in the country but as per preliminary estimates, the annual e-waste generation in India has been estimated to be 0.8 million tonne by 2012. A UN report estimates that the worldwide generation of e-waste is around 30 to 50 million tonne per annum.
Electronic components are increasingly made from recycled materials, for example for making new LCDs, more than 50% of indium is sourced by recycling used LCDs. The e-waste presents a scenario of urban mining for recovery of ferrous, non-ferrous and rare earth metal and precious metal in addition to plastics and glass. However, the presence of hazardous and toxic substances in the component of e-waste necessitates environmentally sound management of e-waste including collection and recycling and treatment in an environmentally sound manner, Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) officials said.
The e-waste (Management & Handling) Rules, 2011 have been notified with the aim to channel the e-waste generated in the country for environmentally sound recycling. According to Maharashtra Pollution Control Board authorities there are some 20 e-waste dismantlers in Pune, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Nagpur and Aurangabad. SwaCH — a collective that has been authorised by Pune Municipal Corporation to collect 600 tonnes of garbage, out of which 140 tonnes is dry — covers nearly four lakh households. SwaCH volunteers who were also present at the festival said that more awareness needs to be created on the effective management of waste.
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