Attero and Shri Ram School join hands to educate children about E-waste Hazards

New Delhi. Attero, India’s largest electronic asset management company joined hands with Shri Ram School to spread awareness about e-waste among children and promote e-waste collection for eco-friendly recycling. Attero has been actively organizing e-waste collection drives in various areas in the Delhi-NCR region in a bid to raise public awareness about e-waste hazards. Strengthening its commitment towards the cause, Attero has partnered with Shri Ram School to reach out to children and encourage them to recycle e-waste responsibly by depositing e-waste in Attero’s collection bins placed in the school premises.

Attero had previously engaged with Shri Ram School to create awareness among students and run an e-waste collection drive. Students with the help of their parents had collected one tonne of e-waste from their homes and neighbourhood for environmentally safe and responsible recycling at Attero’s state of the art recycling facility. Following the overwhelming response during the collection drive, Attero has now permanently placed e-waste collection bins in the school premises and will be collecting e-waste on a monthly basis from the school.

Electronic waste has in recent times become one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world. With this initiative Attero aims to get children to come forward and actively spread the word about e-waste and eco-friendly recycling among others. With Attero’s collection bins placed in the school premises, students can bring in and dispose their old and broken down electronics in a responsible manner, thereby ensuring a greener and healthier environment. Attero is keen on organizing more such events to educate the next generation about e-waste and help curb environmental pollution caused through e-waste.

Electronics contain numerous toxic and hazardous components, which need to be disposed carefully and responsibly once a device reaches the end of its useful life to prevent environmental harm. E-waste in India is all set to reach the 1.72 million metric tons mark by 2020. According to a study by the UN, by 2020 e-waste in India from computers alone will rise by 500%. These figures emphasize the necessity of environmentally responsible e-waste management. In order to address these issues, Attero has been organizing e-waste collection drives under the Clean E-India Initiative. The Clean E-India Initiative is a partnership between Attero and the International Finance Corporation, a World Bank entity. The Clean E-India Initiative aims to establish an efficient take back model for electronic waste collection by working with all stakeholders involved in the electronics supply chain. As more and more consumers join in to take part in these e-waste collection programs, it will bring in huge network benefits as each new consumer joining the network brings incremental value to all other consumers who are part of the network because more OEMs join in. These network effects make it a winner takes all market and Attero is best positioned to capture the market. Attero has already tied up with over 21 of the top OEMs including Wipro, Samsung, HCL and Voltas to ensure eco-friendly e-waste management.

As a NASA recognized technology innovator, Attero has developed a patent pending technology for recycling e-waste and extracting valuable resources like precious and rare earth metals from e-waste. Developed in house at Attero’s state of the art R&D lab, this technology allows Attero to set up e-waste recycling and pure metal extraction facilities with minimum viable operating capacity of 2000 tonnes annually, at a very low cost of $2 million. In comparison, traditional metal extraction facilities, which extract metals from e-waste, require $100 million to setup with a minimum viable operating capacity of 100,000 tonnes per annum. Attero’s technology offers a more feasible solution for e-waste management, particularly for emerging economies where most of the world’s e-waste ends up, as opposed to establishing $100 million metal extraction facilities. Powered by its patent pending technology Attero plans to set up distributed low capex, low capacity, non hazardous e-waste recycling and metal extraction plants to manage e-waste in an environmentally friendly manner.