CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES FOR E-WASTE MANAGEMENT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Abstract

Electronic waste generated in developing countries are not scientifically handled causing direct and indirect
hazardous problems to the global environment leading to enormous effect on human health and society. Currently it is
expected that 400 million of e waste is generated per year by a developing country like Bangladesh. The E-waste
management is exacerbated due to several problems which include lack of proper infrastructure, scientific, economic,
technically trained human assets and inadequate infrastructure. The composition of E-waste are toxic materials like
Beryllium(Be), Barium(Ba) , Arsenic(AS), Mercury(Hg), Cadmium(CD), Lead(PB) which are being generated from
discarded electronic products such as computers, mobile phones, televisions, fax machines, audio equipments and
batteries. There is a certain lack of awareness of how to reused, rescale and refurbished these products so as to minimize
their effects as some of their e waste which are dump to landfills reduces the quality of land due to the percolation of the
toxic materials into the soil through the leach ate. Due to improper E-waste policy and restricted use of preventive
procedures adopted in developing countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh has cause an alarming concern for
effectively handling E-waste. In this paper, we investigate the effects of E-waste problem in developing countries,
challenges that are being faced in handling the e waste. We have also proposed certain solutions which can be undertaken
to recover and reuse the best from the E-waste