Electronic waste describes of discarding or disposing of electrical or electronic waste such as phones, air conditioner, laptops. Items which cannot be reused recycled or resale is considered as electronic waste. India is the fifth largest country in production of electronic waste. As it is highly populated country the usage of electronic items are more. Most of the metropolitan cities are in the top list of producing electronic waste, for instance Bombay generates 11,000 tons of E-waste, Delhi 9000 tons, Bangalore 8000 tons and Chennai 5000-6000 tons each year says Research Journal of Chemical Sciences.

In present times if we study closely e-waste is one of the fastest growing pollution problems which are increasing almost three times than that of municipal waste globally. With the increase in consumption of electronic goods and also with their usage pattern the generation of e-waste also increases. As there is no separate collection of e-waste in India, no reliable figures are available as yet to quantify the e-waste generation. The electronic industry is the largest and fastest growing manufacturing industry. The Indian information technology (IT) has a prominent global presence today largely due to software sector. Establishment of IT companies and Multinational Companies in India has led infrastructure to a greater level. This has led to excess use of electric appliances. For instance IT companies in Bengaluru provides world class infrastructure.

India with population of over 1 billion is one of the fastest growing economies of the world. The growing economy and increasing consumption is estimated to be generating approximately 4, 00,000 tons of electronic waste annually and is expected to grow at a much higher rate of 10-15% says Research Journal of Chemical Sciences. India being a highly populated country producing electronic waste does not have many recycling unit in order to reduce, reuse and recycle the e-waste.

Researchers say that USA is a larger producer of e-waste; they dump all of their waste in developing and under developed country. India is a victim of this cruel act. End-of-life products find their way to recycling yards in countries such as India and China, where poorly-protected workers dismantle them, often by hand, in appalling conditions. About 25,000 workers are employed at scrapyards in Delhi alone, where 10,000 to 20,000 tons of e-waste is handled every year, with computers accounting for 25 percent of it. Other e-waste scrap-yards exist in Meerut, Firozabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Mumbai. Workers work with bare hands, without masks under unhygienic conditions, informally recycling tons of e-waste for about 12-14 hours a day. The workers which are involved in collection and recycling come from socially and economically poor families. Most of them are landless or small farmers. None of the labor laws or environmental laws is implemented while using this rudimentary tech. As a result it causes health hazards to the workers and pollutes the environment.

The challenges of managing E-waste in India are very different from those in other countries, both the developed and developing. Widespread of e-waste recycling in the informal sector using rudimentary techniques such as acid kills the health of workers. E-waste workers have little or no knowledge of toxins in E-waste, and are exposed to serious health hazards. Inefficient recycling processes result in substantial losses of material value. The major problem we face in India there is no such technology or clear policy to check the disposal of e-waste. E-waste is mostly recycled by backyard practitioners.