Neighbours in India unite to help solve e-waste problem.

Residents of Kasturba Nagar (India) are becoming more aware of eWaste.  A lot of residents groups in the city of Chennai have been trying to get people to recycle their old electronics. Because eWaste needs to be handled carefully, it has always been pushed aside. Some groups, like the Residents of Kasturbanagar Association (ROKA), have started paying more attention to eWaste in the last three years. They see it as a category that should be given more attention, one that requires residents to do a lot of careful mass collection of eWaste and leave the recycling and disposal to the experts.

In the last three years, this group of residents from the neighbourhood of Kasturba Nagar has organised five eWaste drives. The fifth one is coming up soon (February 11-13 2022 at Bala Vidya Mandir in Gandhi Nagar). As time went on, ROKA started combining eWaste collection with the collection of old clothes, mattresses, pillows, shoes, and other things that were long past their use-by dates.

The residents of other parts of the city of Chennai would drop off eWaste and come back with an idea for how to do the same thing in their own area. Some time ago, ROKA worked on the spark. That’s how people in Manapakkam got to have a similar drive in their neighbourhood a few months ago.

In this fifth drive, which focuses on electronic waste, old clothes, mattresses, pillows, and shoes that are too worn out to be reused, we start a new thing: having “multiple collection centres,” which each work very well on their own. As long as they kept their recyclables together on the last day, they would all be ready for pick-up. Janani Venkitesh, who works for ROKA, says that all of the groups are involved in the exercise for free. In this case, even the recyclers don’t charge for collecting waste. This raises questions about how communities in a locality that participate in a drive would move the recyclables to a common point for the recyclers to pick them up, though. In Perumbakkam, where a lot of people are on board with the project, this logistical question is being debated.

At the same time as the ROKA exercise, Rani Meyyammai Towers and Trellis South are both running drives for their residents. This is what Janani Venkitesh told me on February 4. Even people in the Kotturpuram neighbourhood are trying to figure out how they can take part in the exercise.

Janani says: “In fact, we thought about having it down there in Tambaram as well, but we realised that we don’t have the time to go and help people in Tambaram if they organised a drive this time.”.

First reported in The Hindu