Kerala Government has launched E-waste disposal in state schools

Kerala government has begun e-waste disposal in its state schools with about 12500 kg being disposed state wide on a single day under a programme aimed at clearing the accumulated junk.

The programme is a joint initiative of Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE), formerly IT@School project and Clean Kerala Company.

Key Highlights

• The initiative mainly aims to dispose e-waste such as desktop computers, CRT monitors, laptops, disk drives, printers, UPS, camera, speaker system, television, network components and generators from 10,000 odd schools and educational offices in the state.

• The accumulated junk is reported to be over 1 Cr kg.

• The first vehicle carrying the e-waste from a school was flagged off on 24 August.

• Similar vehicles were flagged off through video conferencing from other constituencies as well including Alappuzha, Puthukkad, Kozhikode North and Thaliparamaba.

Schools reportedly have over 1 Cr kg of e-Waste accumulated since the past two decades. Besides obstructing the lab activities, the e-waste eats up huge space of IT labs.

E-Waste Disposal Method

• Instead of simply disposing e-Waste as garbage that creates environmental issues, the state government is using scientific methods to recycle and refurbish them as per the central government norms.

• The Clean Kerala Company would be collecting the e-waste in batches of 500 kg from schools, for which neighbouring schools will be clustered.

• The KITE had undertaken an online survey to capture the quantity of e-waste in each school and to collect them as batches. The exercise was completed by 15 July.

• The e-waste will be scientifically processed at the recycling facility of Earth Sense Recycling Company in Hyderabad.