Tackling tech waste in Pune: Amid rising electronic waste; civic campaign pushes for safe disposal and community action
Hyderabad has launched multiple e-waste initiatives to combat hazardous electronic waste. Led by both public and private sectors, these efforts aim to raise awareness about the dangers of improper e-waste disposal, establish efficient collection mechanisms, and promote safe recycling practices through certified recyclers.
What is E-waste?
E-waste, or electronic waste, refers to discarded electrical or electronic devices that are no longer in use, are obsolete, or have reached the end of their useful life. This includes items like computers, mobile phones, televisions, refrigerators, and other consumer electronics. E-waste often contains hazardous materials such as lead, mercury, and cadmium, making the proper disposal and recycling of this waste essential to prevent environmental and health risks.
E-waste management in Hyderabad
Being a major IT hub, Hyderabad has seen a massive escalation in its E-waste production, especially owing to the fact that it is rapidly getting urbanised.
The Telangana Pollution Control Board (TGPCB) has enacted the E-waste (Management) Rules, 2018, to promote efficient handling of electronic waste and responsible management to reduce environmental harm.
The E-waste Management Rules 2016 outlined the role of the state government of Telangana, which stressed the responsibilities taken by the government, including a mandatory registration process that shall be notified for workers involved in dismantling and recycling after consulting with the Department of Labour, Employment Training, and Factories.
For electronic consumers, records are also to be maintained of the E-waste generated.
The E-waste policy of 2017 had a vision to create an aware society that plays an active role in managing E-waste by channelizing and segregating discarded products to the right avenues.
In Telangana, 'Green Warriors' are individuals or groups who are actively involved in environmental protection and conservation efforts, supported by the government. According to the Management Policy, Green Warriors are to ensure that the E-waste processing unit provides safety equipment to all staff and follows the rules strictly.
The government is also to provide performance-based financial assistance to the E-waste processing unit.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
16 hours ago
- Indian Express
North Block is leaving the building, with files, stationery and nostalgia
In its 94-year existence, North Block has seen a lot. It was the seat of power of the colonial British government, the site of spontaneous celebrations when India became Independent in 1947, and, ever since, has been a witness to successive governments shaping policy for the nation. These days, however, the corridors of the building are nearly deserted, with sections roped off, and locks hanging on doors that till recently hid a flurry of activity. The building is in the process of being emptied as part of the government's plan to redevelop the Central Vista area – the stretch from India Gate to Rashtrapati Bhawan. North Block now is to be repurposed as a museum, with key ministries that have operated out of it since 1931 when its construction finished – including Union Ministries of Home Affairs and Finance, and the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) – to be moved to a set of 'Kartavya Bhawan' buildings down the road. However, the work of shifting a government can't be hurried up. And in this case is being coordinated by a ministry – Housing and Urban Affairs, which is also spearheading the Central Vista redevelopment. Other ministries have appointed a nodal officer each for the exercise, which began around a month ago. Under their watch, files are being sorted into marked boxes, computers are being packed, and office supplies are going into cardboard containers. Artwork, including many, many photographs of Mahatma Gandhi, is being bubble-wrapped. The packing is being done by office staff, aided by a team of workers hired for the job. Once packed, the boxes are carried by workers down the stairs to a side entrance, and loaded onto tempos and government cars. These then cover the short distance to the new address. An official working in North Block says the move has been fairly smooth so far, particularly when it comes to files, given that nearly all, save the sensitive ones, are now on the government's E-Office portal. Officials in the know say the DoPT has almost entirely moved out. Jitendra Singh, the Minister of State for Prime Ministers' Office, Science and Technology and Personnel, is expected to shift soon, sources said. The Home Ministry has been allotted Kartavya Bhawan 3, and Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan and the Intelligence Bureau were some of the first ones to shift. According to sources, the shifting of some offices to KB3, as the building is referred to, began before its formal inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 6. The Finance Ministry, however, is yet to begin shifting. An officer in the middle of shifting says: 'I'm soaking in the last few days at this building. Many of my former colleagues who have worked here have been dropping by to see the offices one last time.' Like the South Block that stands across it, North Block, designed by British architect Herbert Baker in red sandstone, incorporating Indian features like jaali, chajja and chhattri, is as much a regal structure as a functional one, with plenty of light and ventilation. The new buildings, in comparison, look like any modern corporate office, with glass cabins for officers, open plan seating for most employees and access-control systems. Offices in the South Block, which houses the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministries of Defence and External Affairs, have not started moving out yet. Once both the buildings are emptied, they are to be restored and refurbished, before reopening as Yuge Yugeen National Museum. The government claims it will be the largest museum in the world. The 'charm' of North Block is what those who have worked here keep coming back to in conversations. G K Pillai, who spent seven years in North Block, first as Joint Secretary from 1996 to 2001 and then as Union Home Secretary from 2009 to 2011, recalls the sense of history that permeates the rooms. 'Stalwarts, including Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, worked here. Old-timers would tell us about important meetings that took place in the past,' Pillai, who is now retired, says. The former IAS officer adds that he personally believes that not all the ministries from North Block and South Block should have been shifted to the new quarters. 'Some of them could have stayed. The next generation of officers will lose that sense of history,' says Pillai. Durga Shanker Mishra, a 1984-batch IAS officer who retired as Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary last year, recalls his time in a ground-floor North Block office as Director (Personnel) in the Home Ministry in 2002-2004. 'I have good memories of that office. Though I was a director in Home, I had been given a room on the Finance Ministry's side. It was a well-sized room.' However, Mishra says: 'As is the case with old buildings, there were challenges. It needed more maintenance over the years.' As Secretary, Housing and Urban Affairs, Mishra was, in fact, part of the deliberations when the Central Vista project was planned and started. He says the new Central Secretariat buildings will change the way the government works, in terms of efficiency and coordination. In fact, while senior officers – who along with ministers had large airy offices – are understandably nostalgic about the high-ceilinged large rooms that they are leaving behind, not all in the North Block will regret the change. A majority of its employees worked in cramped spaces, with partitions created within dingy rooms to accommodate more officials over the years. Mezzanine levels were also added to create space, with the temporary additions doubling the number of rooms in both North and South Blocks over the years. A section official says: 'We are looking forward to the new building. I've heard that the canteen is very nice.' But true to form, the open-plan layout of the new Secretariat also has its share of detractors. On August 5, the Central Secretariat Service Forum, which represents around 13,000 employees, wrote a letter to the Prime Minister's Office expressing concerns about 'the lack of privacy and confidentiality' in the new arrangement.
Time of India
18 hours ago
- Time of India
Disposal of consumer cases in NCDRC at 122 pc in Jul; 10 states resolve over 100 pc complaints
National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission ( NCDRC ) has achieved a disposal rate of 122 per cent in consumer cases during the last month, the government said on Sunday. Independence Day 2025 Modi signals new push for tech independence with local chips Before Trump, British used tariffs to kill Indian textile Bank of Azad Hind: When Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose gave India its own currency Besides, the Department of Consumer Affairs in the central government highlighted that 10 states have also achieved more than 100 per cent disposal rate in July. More than 100 per cent disposal rate means the cases resolved by the consumer forums were higher than the cases filed during that month. This will result in clearing the backlog of pending cases. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Play this game for 1 minute and see why everyone is addicted. Undo At present, there is the NCDRC at the national level and 35 State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commissions (SCDRC). There are 685 district commissions as well. "In a significant achievement for consumer grievance redressal in the country, ten states, along with the NCDRC, recorded a disposal rate of over 100 per cent in the month of July 2025," the department, in a statement, said. Live Events This indicated that the number of cases resolved exceeded the number of complaints filed during this period, it added. As per the data from the Department of Consumer Affairs, NCDRC achieved a disposal rate of 122 per cent. Tamil Nadu recorded 277 per cent disposal rate, Rajasthan 214 per cent, Telangana 158 per cent, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand 150 per cent each, Meghalaya 140 per cent, Kerala 122 per cent, Puducherry 111 per cent, Chhattisgarh 108 per cent and Uttar Pradesh 101 per cent. Analysis of the July 2025 data revealed that the overall disposal of consumer cases across the country was substantially higher than the corresponding period in 2024, the statement said. As of August 6, 2025, over two lakh users, including NRIs, have registered on the e-Jagriti platform since its launch on January 1, 2025, and 85,531 cases have been filed through this platform this year alone. The department launched e-Jagriti as a next-generation and unified digital platform to transform consumer grievance redressal across the country. The platform enables consumers and advocates to register via OTP-based authentication, file complaints from anywhere in India or abroad, pay fees online or offline, and track case progress in real time, the statement said. PTI
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
19 hours ago
- First Post
Cryptocurrency: America rushes in where India, China fear to tread
Geopolitics has revived the 'crypto wars' of the 1990s, yet today the struggle is continental rather than computational. On one flank stand the United States and much of the West, treating digital tokens as just another volatile asset class to be tamed by markets and tolerated by regulators. On the other side stand China and India, unlikely fellows whose shared suspicion of borderless money has inspired a twin assault on private crypto-currencies. Whether laissez-faire zeal or dirigiste caution proves the surer guide will shape global finance. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Beijing fired the latest salvo on May 31, when it imposed a blanket ban on mining, trading and even private ownership of coins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The decree capped a decade-long squeeze that began with banking curbs in 2013, hardened into an ICO prohibition in 2017 and outlawed onshore transactions in 2021. Three concerns drove the final kill switch. First, capital flight: analysts reckon more than $50 billion seeped out of China via crypto in 2019-20. Second, financial stability: untamed price swings threaten household savings and could undermine the country's highly leveraged property developers and shadow banks. Third, political control: decentralised ledgers collide with the Communist Party's quest for digital sovereignty and jeopardise the e-CNY, a central-bank token Beijing insists must sit on the throne. New Delhi has not gone so far, yet it has tightened the fiscal tourniquet. Gains on any coin attract a punitive 30 per cent tax and a one-percent tax deducted at source on every trade. The Reserve Bank of India, which once likened Bitcoin to a Ponzi scheme, still campaigns for an outright ban, warning that borderless money could drain rupee sovereignty and turbocharge illicit flows. Across the Pacific the mood is giddier. Roughly one in six American adults already owns some crypto. Wall Street hawks spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds; North America now processes more on-chain value than any other region. Donald Trump, sensing populist resonance, is pouring accelerant on the bonfire. His media firm is floating 'America First' crypto ETFs, seeking a 2.5-billion-dollar Bitcoin treasury and trumpeting the Genius Act, a law that offers legitimacy to dollar-pegged stablecoins. Meanwhile, a meme coin dubbed 'Trump' has vaulted from obscurity to multibillion-dollar heft, with scant disclosure and most of the supply parked in entities the former president ultimately controls. Oversight, like taxes on Mar-a-Lago tips, looks optional. The divergence is rooted in history as much as ideology. The West has few capital controls and long experience of volatile assets; the Global South has spent decades fencing off foreign-exchange reserves. Washington views crypto much as it once viewed biotech or cannabis: speculative, risky, but ultimately containable. Beijing and New Delhi see an escape hatch through which wealth, tax and ultimately sovereignty might vanish. Studies of money laundering reinforce their fears. Forensic firms report that criminals cherish the 'virtually instant' cross-border hop of tokens, and European police agencies warn that professional crypto-launderers now pose a systemic threat. Officials fret that a mere string of private keys could spirit fortunes abroad faster than regulators can draft circulars. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Yet the prize is hardly stable. Bitcoin has crashed by more than 50 per cent five times: from 1,200 dollars to 200 in 2013, from 20,000 to 3,000 in 2018, and from 69,000 to 20,000 in 2022, before roaring past six figures in late 2024. Still, adoption creeps upward. Roughly 560 million people—almost seven per cent of humanity—now hold a sliver of crypto. Millennials dominate in America; in Vietnam and Nigeria grass-roots users are even younger. The genie is out, but it still rides a roller coaster. Proponents trumpet three virtues. Crypto, they say, slashes payment friction, crossing borders in minutes rather than banking days. It extends financial inclusion because a smartphone is cheaper than a branch network. And it offers censorship resistance, letting dissidents raise funds under repressive regimes. Each claim carries a sting. Congestion fees can rival bank wire costs, and proof-of-work remains an energy glutton. Volatile balances can evaporate faster than payday-loan interest, leaving the poorest with no recourse. The same cloak that shields activists also hides ransomware gangs and narco-cartels, frustrating police armed only with subpoenas. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Meanwhile, the stand-off sharpens. China's e-CNY pilots are courting Belt-and-Road creditors; India's digital-rupee sandbox is under way. The United States toys with a central-bank dollar yet seems happier letting private stablecoins bloom so long as they stay green-backed and vaguely regulated. The conflict is no longer merely regulatory; it is philosophical. Must money remain an instrument of the state, or can code and consensus dethrone the decree? Crypto's architecture answers yes; its history of scams answers not yet. The writer is a senior journalist with expertise in defence. Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Firstpost.
