InstaCash has launched its first mobile e-waste kiosk in collaboration with Pollution Control Board on world environment day, 5th June 2018. A three-day campaign was inaugurated by Minister of environment and forest, Shri Gajendra Khinsver at 7:00 AM at IOC petrol pump, Jaipur. As a part of the drive, mobile e-waste collection kiosks are placed across prominent petrol pumps of Jaipur.
India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market and the mobile usage keeps on increasing. According to study done by IIM Bangalore & research form Counterpoint Research, India will be have more than 50 crore smartphone users in next 5 years. Also the local mobile phones manufactures have also increased from 14% in 2014 to 67% in 2014. This figure will hit 95% by 2020. With increasing affordable phone options consumer tends to replace & discard their phones sooner.
This consumer trend eventually increases the amount of mobile e-waste in the country posing challenges to the limited & crippled e-waste recyclers in the country.
To the issue of mobile e-waste awareness & provide accessible collection centers, Instacash launched its e-waste free campaign, wherein collection kiosks were installed at petrol pumps of Jaipur for people of Jaipur to come and dispose of their mobile e-waste such as mobile, charger, battery etc. People were incentivized with Cash & coupons for their efforts & contribution.
During the three-day drive, 1970 dead mobile phones along with damaged chargers and batteries were collected from Jaipur city. After seeing the success of the pilot initiative, InstaCash plans to install the kiosk in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Noida, Surat & other cities very soon, with an aim to get rid of the hazardous mobile e-waste from each household.
During the event, founder of InstaCash, Prateek Goel told that, Mobile phones are the most dangerous e-waste, generated in India because, they contain the high amount of lead, mercury, and cadmium. He added, “Avoid buying unnecessary gadgets and increase the e-waste load rather, extend the life of your device by channelizing your device through re-commerce platforms, recycler, refurbishers. We all are responsible for making this environment polluted so it’s our duty to make a small contribution in saving this environment.”
Vijay Singhal, Environment Engineer Pollution Control board said, “Such initiatives can bring in great awareness about e-waste and their hazards, which will eventually give convenience to people to get rid of the e-waste from our households. The major cause of increasing e-waste is increasing due to that fact that only 5% of India’s e-waste gets recycled due to the poor infrastructure and remaining 95% of India’s e-waste is managed by local scrap dealers and unorganized sector who dismantle the discarded products instead of recycling them.”
InstaCash urged people be the part of its e-waste campaign and dispose of e-waste at the collection center set up at petrol pumps and get Cash vouchers, coupons.
