Segregating dreams from scrap: Seelampur's e-waste economy moves to shadows but doesn't stop

New Delhi, Jun 15 (PTI) In the winding, congested alleyways of New Seelampur, a 500-foot stretch tucked deep inside east Delhi, life hums with the quiet rustle of wires, metal scraps, and fraying hopes.

Every household here seems tied to the business of e-waste -- a world where old computers, phones, fridges, and their innards are torn down, stripped, sorted, and sold.

But the story is no longer what it once was.

As India’s e-waste policy evolves and the gaze of enforcement agencies intensifies, the epicentre of one of the world’s largest informal e-waste markets has quietly dispersed, not collapsed, but fragmented and slipped into the shadows.

The business hasn’t ended, it has just moved -- to Loni, Muradabad, Meerut and smaller towns where it thrives away from the eyes of the regulators, the media, and digital scrutiny.

“The volumes have not really reduced. The business is still alive, but just not visible in Delhi anymore,” says Vinod, programme officer at Toxics Link, an environmental NGO.

“Two things are happening -- the market is moving out, and formal recyclers are taking some share, but the informal chain still dominates,” he adds.

During a recent visit to the New Seelampur slum, PTI witnessed how this once-bustling hub has morphed into a quieter but deeply embedded network.

As the reporter walked through the slum’s narrow lanes, nearly every doorway opened into a home where families were engaged in e-waste segregation.

In a dimly-lit 6x6 feet room, 50-year-old Saleema sat hunched over a knee-high mound of cables. Her fingers, bent with arthritis, sort wires from morning to night, guided only by a low-watt bulb dangling from the tin roof.

For 10 kg of wires, she earns Rs 50 -- slightly more if she finds slivers of copper.

A single mother -- her alcoholic husband vanished into irrelevance years ago -- Saleema supports her three children.

Her eldest son has been lodged in Tihar Jail for over a year on theft charges, still awaiting trial.

“I have been doing this for over 30 years. This is the only life I’ve known,” she says.

Next door, 19-year-old Shahheda sits outside her one-room home, her hands still hennaed from her wedding barely a month ago.

Married into this community from Muradabad, she’s no stranger to the trade. After making breakfast for her family, she joins her husband and in-laws, segregating wires.

“'Copper dekh rahe hain’... If we get a good amount, it helps us with daily expenses. It’s little, but it adds up,” she says.

Nearby, Sajid Khan’s family of five is also neck-deep in dismantling old electronics.

“'Pehle se kaam bahut kam ho gaya hai’. The buyers are there, but GST and high costs have driven things outside. It’s formalised now,” he says.

His daughter attends school in the morning and returns to help in the evening -- a pattern repeated in many homes here.

Twelve-year-old Sharmila (name changed) wants to become a doctor – and not just any doctor, but one who treats her neighbours, many of whom suffer from chronic ailments linked to toxic exposure.

“After school, I help my father,” she says shyly, as she picks apart an old mobile charger.

Her father, who did not wish to be named, is saving every rupee in the hope of breaking the cycle.

“We want to leave this behind,” he says.

On any given day, one might see an array of tasks being carried out here -- circuit boards being pried open, mobile phones separated into batteries, cases, and chips.

For Rs 80, a technician will strip an old phone into saleable pieces. In the makeshift shanties, traders examine CRTs from old monitors, polishing the glass to resell in rural markets. Impure copper sells for Rs 600 per kg; pure fetches up to Rs 800.

Each house is a microcosm of labour -- families bent over wires, children washing dismantled parts, mothers selling components to traders who come knocking. Yet, the total daily income rarely crosses Rs 500-Rs 1,000 per household.

“e-waste is processed in phases -- from collection to dismantling to material recovery -- and each stage generates economic value,” explains Vinod from Toxics Link.

“That’s why it survives. Every actor in the chain makes something, even if it’s meagre.” India's E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022, was designed to tighten controls, making producers more responsible through extended producer responsibility (EPR). But the system still falls short.

“How laws are made is not very important but how implementation takes place is the key, and that is where the gap is between implementation and the role of the informal sector -- these are two serious gaps,” says Satish Sinha, associate director, Toxics Link, which works closely in the sector.

Only about 500,000 tonnes of e-waste were formally collected in 2021-22 -- out of more than 3 million tonnes generated.

And even though companies are mandated to send waste to the authorised recyclers, loopholes abound, says public policy analyst Dharmesh Shah.

“The rules fail to address the complexity of the ground reality, where informal actors-- scrap dealers, repair workshops, waste pickers-- continue to handle 95 per cent of this waste, in often unhealthy and unsafe conditions,” Shah says.

Major loopholes remain in the current policy framework: discarded electronics often circulate as second-hand devices or mix into metal scrap, bypassing official EPR routes entirely, Shah says.

"While the rules stipulate that only registered recyclers may handle e-waste, enforcement remains uneven. Producers can claim credits through registered partners, even if diverse waste streams never enter the formal system.

“As a result, large volumes of e-waste stay untraced-- undermining both environmental objectives and formal accountability," he says.

The imports of e-waste into India as second-hand goods further adds to the complication as there is no clear mechanism to differentiate between end-of-life products and genuinely refurbished items, he adds.

Today, the work of burning wires, once openly done in Seelampur, is carried out quietly inside homes or relocated to the satellite towns.

The Chinese-made wire stripping machines have replaced some manual labour, but not all. The actual dismantling -- sorting, stripping, burning -- is still largely done by hand. The traders now operate via phone calls, with less visibility.

"When companies float tenders, the bigger traders come into the picture. But the leftovers trickle down into this chain. Informal recyclers often buy the same scrap at a cheaper rate through back channels. Formal ones follow the rules -- at least on paper. But the informal economy is still deeply entrenched,” Vinod says.

New Seelampur’s e-waste business is no longer booming, but it hasn’t died. It has only decentralised -- faded into the alleys on the outskirts of Delhi.

Yet, its people remain caught between survival and the slow poison of wires. There’s resilience here, but also resignation.

“I don’t want this life for my daughter. But until I save enough money to move out, we keep pulling these wires apart," Sharmila's father says. PTI UZM ARI ARI