Banks, schools, and colleges are the biggest contributors of electronic waste (e-Waste) in Nagpur. These entities together generate more than 1,000 MT of e-Waste every year in the city, claimed a data by Suritex Pvt Ltd, the only authorised e-Waste recycling company of Central India here on Thursday. The company has the capacity to recycle 2,500 MT e-waste every year, of which around 1,100 MT e-waste comes from banks, schools and colleges of Nagpur. “Today banks are completely dependent on computers and electronics. There are hundreds of banks in Nagpur and every bank have their numerous branches in and around Nagpur city. Along with this they have their ATMs all over the city. So these banks are creating huge amount of e-waste every year which we are collecting and recycling,” Mahima Suri, Marketing Head, Suritex Pvt Ltd, told The Hitavada. Similarly, schools and colleges are also generating e-waste in huge quantity in the city. We have tie-up with these schools and colleges who send their e-waste every year, said Mahima. “We were recycling only 360 MT of e-waste per year till 2021-22. But we got permission to increase our capacity upto 2,500 MT per year last year.

 

As a result, we recycled 2,500 MT of e-waste this year which is still just a very small amount of city’s e-waste generation,” said Mahima. “According to the E-waste (Management) Rules, 2022, it is now mandatory for every bulk consumer to recycle their e-waste with an authorised recycler. Following these norms we are now serving various schools, colleges, banks, hospitals, IT Companies, Industries in Vidarbha region and some regions of Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh too. We have now more than 400 clients where we are providing e-waste services,” said the Marketing Head of the company. “The approximate population of Nagpur is 40 lakhs, with an average of 5 people per family, resulting in roughly 6,00,000 households. Considering that about 50% of the population generates e-waste, we estimate that there are around 3,00,000 homes with some form of electronic waste. Assuming an average of 5 kg of e-waste per household, there is a staggering total weight of around 2,500 tons of e-waste present which is a huge number,” said Gaurav Suri, Director, Suritex Pvt Ltd.