High revenues, low power bills put India’s e-waste recycling under cloud

Recycling is an energy-hungry business. Yet revenues run high with comparatively smaller spending on power.

WrittenBy:Shivnarayan Rajpurohit
Date:
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India’s e-waste recycling industry is booming. But projections show that even by 2035, it will process only 40 percent of the country’s waste mountain.

Recycling, after all, is an energy-hungry business — shredding, sorting, melting and refining machines run round the clock, burning through at least Rs 120 worth of electricity per metric tonne of waste. 

Yet Newslaundry’s review of records shows that a few plants report unusually modest power bills compared to their revenues, raising concerns about whether their claimed recycling volumes can actually add up.

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