In just five years, India’s electronic waste has exploded from 11.4 lakh metric tonnes to a staggering 17.5 lakh metric tonnes – a 72 percent increase that equals the weight of 3.24 lakh adult Indian elephants.
Amid this, a high-stakes legal battle can affect Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious e-waste management vision, with leading electronics manufacturers mounting a legal challenge against government-mandated price floors for recycling certificates, threatening to undermine India’s electronic waste processing system at a critical moment of environmental crisis.
The prime minister had emphasised the potential for extracting precious metals and rare earth minerals from e-waste – a strategy that could reduce India’s substantial import bill while addressing environmental concerns. Especially as the government estimates that only one-third of India’s e-waste currently undergoes proper recycling – the rest disappears into informal channels or simply accumulates in landfills, leaching toxic chemicals into soil and groundwater.
At the heart of the latest conflict are extended producer responsibility (EPR) certificates, which appliance producers must purchase to meet their legal recycling obligations. Previously, these certificates traded at market-determined prices. But in March 2024, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change introduced price controls – setting minimum prices at 30 percent of environmental compensation rates and maximum prices at 100 percent. These were put into effect in September.
With producers challenging the regulatory framework, recyclers report that EPR certificate sales have plummeted.
Challenge to government-mandate price floors
Since November last year, a few producers of electrical and electronics equipment have approached the Delhi High Court to challenge the March 2024 amendments to the E-Waste Management Rules, 2022, and subsequent guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, and its technical expert, the Central Pollution Control Board. They include electrical equipment and home appliance giants Havells, Voltas, Daikin, and Hitachi.
“There is no power in the Environment Protection Act and Rules [of 1986] which permit the government and/or the CPCB to regulate any commercial terms between the producers and recyclers to fix the price of EPR certificates,” read the petition filed by Havells in November last year. Terming the amended rules “ultra vires”, “arbitrary” and “unreasonable”, the petition argued that fixing floor and ceiling prices is not linked to environmental protection.
The other companies listed above later joined Havells. They also objected to linking the EPR certificate price to environmental compensation (EC), which is paid by non-compliant producers.
EPR certificates are issued by recyclers who earn EPR credits depending on how much metal they extract after recycling e-waste. Only four metals are considered for credits: gold, copper, aluminium, and iron. All trading takes place on CPCB’s portal where each stakeholder has to register.
The CPCB has standardised the metal content in 106 categories of electronic items. For example, a laptop is estimated to contain up to 0.0004 percent gold, 0.19 percent copper, 5 percent iron, and 11 percent aluminium of its weight. If a laptop producer has an EPR obligation of recycling 1,000 laptops, it needs EPR credits for 4 gm of gold, 1.9 kg of copper, 50 kg of iron and 110 kg of aluminium.
According to the CPCB’s 2024 guidelines, the government has set minimum and maximum prices for these certificates across seven product categories. For consumer electronics like televisions and refrigerators, this translates to between Rs 22 and Rs 74 per kilogram. Information technology equipment such as smartphones commands higher rates – between Rs 34 and Rs 112 per kilogram.
At the heart of the latest conflict are extended producer responsibility (EPR) certificates, which appliance producers must purchase to meet their legal recycling obligations. Previously, these certificates traded at market-determined prices. But in March 2024, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change introduced price controls – setting minimum prices at 30 percent of environmental compensation rates and maximum prices at 100 percent.
These price limits are directly linked to the environmental compensation rate for each category. For example, a consumer electronics company that is charged Rs 22 per kg of e-waste for an EPR certificate. If it fails to meet its e-waste recycling target, it will be charged Rs 74 per kg, or 100 percent of environmental compensation.
CPCB has said the pricing guidelines will lead to the formalisation of the recycling economy and prevent unscientific processing which causes damage to the environment. It will bring more investment and protect recyclers against commodity price fluctuation and informal players who undercut them.
E-waste recycling is currently concentrated in the unorganised sector which processes 79 percent (1.58 million metric tons) of e-waste while the rest 21 percent (0.42 million MT) is processed by the organised sector, according to Material Recycling Association of India, a group of recyclers.
The recycling process
Newslaundry visited a recycling unit to understand the value chain. The unit, with a capacity to process thousands of tons of consumer electronics goods, receives end of life items from producers or third parties, and pays them for the consignment.
First, the e-waste consignment is inspected following which a few items depending on their quality are refurbished. The rest are sent for dismantling. This is where motors, compressors, printed circuit boards and frames of plastic and steel are segregated. The steel frames are shredded or baled, ready to be sold to companies; plastic undergoes the same process.
Motors and compressors are further sent to another team which open them up using machines while PCBs are put in a furnace after they are shredded. The real value lies deeper: inside motors and compressors are aluminum and copper; within printed circuit boards, hidden beneath layers of fiberglass and plastic, lie tiny treasures of gold and silver.
Machines that are part of the value chain include primary, secondary shredders, compressor cutting set-up, PCB grinder, furnace etc. In total, there are over 40 e-waste machines and 100 in the workforce. These recovered materials then are sold in the market and a sale receipt is uploaded on the CPCB website, after which the recycler gets EPR credits.
The CPCB has set Rs 22 a kg as the minimum recycling cost for consumer electronics. At the plant, recycling cost for consumer electronics is estimated to be around Rs 17 kg, including logistics, rentals, machinery, labour and electricity.
A plant official said selling recovered material in the market is not profitable. “What makes the recycling business profitable is the EPR certificate bought by producers.”
Discontent simmering for over a year
The guidelines were issued in September last year. Months before this, discontent among producers had been simmering after MoEFCC notified amendments to the E-Waste Management Rules, 2024, in March.
One of the sub-rules inserted into the 2022 Rules read, “The CPCB shall fix the highest and lowest price for exchange of extended producer responsibility certificates which shall be equal to hundred percent and thirty percent, respectively of the environmental compensation for non-fulfilment of extended producer responsibility obligation under rule 22.”
Industry bodies such as the Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association (CEAMA) wrote three letters to MoEFCC minister Bhupender Yadav and the ministry’s additional secretary Naresh Pal Gangawar, objecting to EPR rates proposed to be set by CPCB.
“The negotiations of EPR rates should be left solely between the producer and recycler. However, any producer who is not able to fulfil the obligation should be charged EC at rates decided by CPCB,” read one of the letters written by Ravi Shankar Chaudhary, secretary general of CEAMA.
Chaudhary estimated that the transportation, collection, and processing of e-waste would be around Rs 6 to Rs 20 per kg across categories. “Costs shared by recycler for arriving at EC charges seem to be on the higher side which needs to be looked/audited by CPCB,” the letter further read. For battery waste, he claimed that the proposed EPR rate was “10 times” the current price.
In his letter to Minister Yadav in August, Chaudhary made similar appeals. The upshot was: Let the market decide the best EPR rate.
Days before this, the CPCB had invited all stakeholders, including producers and recyclers, to brainstorm over the EPR certificate rates issue. In the steering committee meeting on e-waste, the anti-pollution regulator shared the recycling cost. The estimate was based on inputs from 40 recyclers.
Industry bodies representing e-waste producers submitted that “the cost of EPR certificates which are derived from the Environmental Compensation (EC) Charges (EC Regime 1) are very high”. They also wanted to know if the recycling cost estimates provided by recyclers’ associations to the CPCB were audited or not.
However, recyclers’ associations lamented that processing e-waste and extracting four metals – gold, aluminium, copper, and iron – was “very costly” and sought support from producers in the upgrade of machinery and technology. The collection of e-waste also resulted in higher costs, they stressed.
An official from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology termed the recycling cost “quite realistic and rational”.
A month later, the MoEFCC issued environment compensation guidelines for e-waste management, detailing recycling costs for seven categories.
In the August meeting, recyclers had informed the steering committee that against an EPR credit of 68,000 metric tonnes, only 17,000 metric tonnes had been purchased so far in 2024-25. The committee has officials from MoEFCC, CPCB, MeitY, and the renewable energy ministry as its members, as well as an expert and industry representatives.
A recycler from the organised sector told Newslaundry that the sale of EPR certificates has dropped due to the court case. “As long as the case continues, there will be fewer takers for EPR certificates,” they said.
They said the selling of recovered metals barely helps them break even. “It’s only the sale of EPR certificates that has kept the recycling business afloat. It won’t be financially viable if we sell only recovered metals in the market,” they said.
With producers resisting price controls and recyclers struggling to stay afloat, the outcome of the court case is now likely to shape the future of India’s e-waste ecosystem.
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