Mohammed Salman rhythmically pounds his hammer, crushing heaps of discarded electronic devices at a small workshop tucked away in one of Delhi’s most impoverished suburbs.
Blind in one eye, the 18-year-old nonchalantly uses his bare hands to dismantle scrapped electronic devices sourced from across India to extract valuable metals and components, while seemingly ignoring the health hazards involved in what is a booming, informal and largely unregulated business.
The teenager is one of the legions of workers who spend up to 12 hours a day searching for gold, silver, copper and titanium inside discarded devices in the narrow lanes of Delhi’s Seelampur neighbourhood, which is on the front line of managing the country’s massive electronic waste.
“I work 12 hours a day. This is all I know to make money,” Mr Salman, who lost his parents at a young age, told The National.
India, the world's third-largest e-waste generator, faces a growing crisis as population growth accelerates electronic waste production. The world’s most populous nation generated 1.7 million metric tons of e-waste in 2024, according to government figures, with the management and recycling of e-waste divided between formal and informal sectors, as seen in Seelampur.
The government has not released official data on the rates of recycling, but a 2021 report found just five per cent of India's total e-waste is recycled by the formal sector. Lack of recycling is a global issue with e-waste rising five times faster than recycling rates, the UN has found.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is working with the Indian government on a $120 million project to modernise the country's e-waste management and protect workers. The Seelampur e-waste market is part of the project, but progress is slow.
Unregulated industry
For decades, the neighbourhood has been the country’s biggest e-waste market, processing tonnes of discarded computers, mobile phones, printers, gaming consoles, and almost all gadgets that run on electronic circuits. Nearly 50,000 people, many of them children, eke out a living extracting metals from the electronic waste. They are involved in dismantling, extracting and recycling the waste, exposing themselves to toxic substances such as lead, mercury and cadmium.
The workshops – mostly single-room establishments – are lined up next to each other in congested alleyways, where the workers use their bare hands to sift and sort circuit boards, batteries, capacitors, plastic and other metal components. Some parts are further recycled in the nearby city of Moradabad. For their hard work, they make an average of 300 rupees ($3.44) per day. The traders buy each discarded electronic device for 100 rupees ($1.15) and earn a profit of 11-23 cents by selling the extracted valuables.
“It is the biggest recycling hub and we get the electronic waste from across the country. We recycle everything, television board, compressor, smartphone, laptop monitor. Then we segregate the scrap and pack it and send it to Moradabad,” says Raj Malik, 42, who has run his e-waste scrap business for two decades, buying items piece by piece and paying workers a daily rate to break them down.
Most establishments do not have the requisite licence or skill to handle e-waste. India attempted to regulate the industry by introducing a series of laws in 2011, banning lead, mercury, cadmium and other harmful chemicals from new electrical and electronic items, and regulating how goods should be recycled, overseen by the State Pollution Control Board. In 2016 it mandated the use of protective gear for workers and placed responsibility on manufacturers for e-waste management.
Activists and environmentalists, however, argue that these regulations are openly flouted and question the accountability of large corporations failing in their responsibilities. Very few workers were wearing the mandated goggles, gloves and masks required for their work when The National visited Seelampur.
“The fact that the informal sector continues to operate on a similar scale, if not larger, is an indication that the government has failed to implement the regulatory framework,” Priti Mahesh, the chief programme co-ordinator at Toxics Link, an environmental group based in New Delhi, told The National.
Ms Mahesh also underlined the failure of the government's Extended Producer Responsibility guidelines, which make manufacturers liable for the collection and channelisation of waste from their products to an authorised dismantler, despite the threat of imprisonment for five years or fines of up to 100,000 rupees ($1,150).
“In a large way, the corporations have also been a failure in diverting the waste from the informal sector to the formal sector. There has been no incentive for the informal sector to shut its operation and move into the formal sector,” Ms Mahesh said.
Health hazard
The unregulated industry also poses threats to health and the environment, but most of those involved in the business are unaware of the dangers of working with e-waste.
Pregnant women, infants and children are particularly at risk, according to the World Health Organisation. It says working with e-waste is associated with increased rates of stillbirth and premature birth, neurodevelopmental disorders, poor learning and behaviour outcomes and reduced lung and respiratory function.
“There is no need for gloves or masks. We are not dealing with anything dangerous here,” Mohammed Alauddin said. Ms Mahesh said the lack of awareness stems from potential harm that isn't visible daily but only in the long term.
“Electronics are considered to be a cocktail of chemicals. They contain hazardous materials like lead and mercury. Because of cost-cutting at every level, there are no equipment or pollution-control devices. These have long health impacts,” Ms Mahesh said. “The industry also has huge implications in terms of occupational health, public health and environment. There have been studies globally and in India identifying and assessing the harm."
Around the world as many as 18 million children and adolescents and 12.9 million women, including an unknown number of women of childbearing age, may be at risk of adverse health outcomes linked to e-waste recycling, according to Unicef’s Children’s Environment Health Collaborative.
