A container filled with e-waste has been seized within the Southern Indian city of Chennai after the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence dubbed it ‘e-waste dumping’.
The Indian media reported yesterday that the shipment had been confiscated after DRI investigators deemed the shipment an illegal dump sent over from Brunei. The container, which arrived marked for Venus Metals located in the Chennai suburbs, had been marked ‘switch board scrap’. However, when authorities opened it, they found 166 computer monitors, circuit boards, loose electrical motor parts, 89 control panels and several broken computer accessories.
C. Rajan, the Additional Director General for DRI, said that the CPUs and processors were obviously in an unusable state. He added that the majority of computer monitors were at least ten years old and were intended for recycling. DRI officials said Chennai was becoming a dumping site for e-waste arriving from Korea, Canada, Australia and Brunei.
During the past two months, the body said it has seized 127 tonnes of e-waste, which if allowed to be dumped could create a serious health threat to the region. The accumulation of such amounts of e-waste would lead to the build-up of hazards to public health such as increased mercury, nickel and lead poisoning.
Since e-waste is considered to be hazardous material, the arrival of such items as imports is only acceptable with pre-approved shipments from the Indian Ministries of Environment and Health. The Director General of Foreign Trade must also issue a licence for all such materials arriving into the country.
However, several developed countries have begun exporting their e-waste to developing nations, where smaller industries are paid to extract recyclable materials such as gold and aluminium. The DRI has identified registered cases, however, where companies and importers are neglecting to gain permission from the appropriate authorities prior to shipping these materials.
|
|
