e-Waste Management

With the average life of electrical and electronics devices being limited – typically 4-5 years, and new products being developed seemingly by the second, e-Waste has been clearly rising at a rapid pace. Cell phones, used computers, televisions, AC and other electronic devices soon reach their end of useful life, and end up in landfills. Most of this electronic waste contains toxic materials such as lead, zinc, nickel, flame retardants, barium and chromium.

When improperly disposed, these toxic chemicals impact the environment as well as human health.

Unfortunately only 12% of this waste is recycled or reused – rest ends up in the landfills.

Recycling e-waste enables us to recover and reuse materials and cut down production waste too.

Recycling Electronics is a simple and eco-friendly process. Used electronics are treated or processed in order to make the materials more suitable for reuse. ECS has its own “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” philosophy in policies and practices in service of the environment’s needs. ECS also complies with regulations and guidelines for handling e-waste and other hazardous materials.

• Dismantling: This stage comprises of the removal of critical components from the e-waste to avoid dilution or contamination with toxic substances during downstream processes.
• Mechanical Processing: this is the second stage in e-waste treatment process, normally an industrial large scale operation to obtain concentrates of recyclable materials in a dedicated fraction and separate hazardous materials. Crushing units, shredders, magnetic and eddy current and air separators are some of the mechanical processing plant equipment. Gas emissions are filtered and effluents are treated to minimize environmental impact.
• Refining: refining helps get back raw materials with minimal environmental impact. Most of the fractions need to be refined or conditioned in order to be sold as secondary raw materials or to be disposed of in a final disposal site.