The Indian Minister of State for Electronics and IT has issued a statement in the Lok Sabha that India will not permit the import of refurbished Apple products because the government thinks that it will accelerate the pace of E- Waste generation.
Apple had applied for the permission to import refurbished, Apple-certified pre-owned products in India. The request was reviewed by the Technical Review Committee in 2015, going by the Hazardous Wastes( Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement )Rules 2008, the committee had recommended to restrict the import of refurbished products. They noted that refurbished products stop working and become obsolete sooner than fresh products.
This move does sound reasonable, but there’s another side to it. All the electronic manufacturers agree that recycling E-Waste is not as good as refurbishing them. Only a tiny percentage of E-Waste gets recycled in India, the rest is sold to scrap dealers which eventually end up in landfills or burnt. About electronics manufacturers say that 77% of the carbon footprint of an electronic device is a result of its manufacturing process, so it is much more sensible to refurbish them than to extract materials and use them again for manufacturing.
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Technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master, it was rightly said. Electronic devices have grown into an inevitable part of our daily lives.
