A modified partitioning algorithm for classification of e-waste

Abstract

Electronic and electrical industry is the largest and fastest growing manufacturing industry because of tremendous growth in both software applications and upgraded hardware. The past two decades have seen an exceptionally strong growth in the electronic equipment market. Electronic and electrical products become electronic waste (e-waste) when the products or items used lifecycle being ended. Electronic products are made up of many materials like plastics, heavy metals (lead, mercury, gold, platinum, silver, copper, zinc, selenium, cadmium, chromium and many more), dioxin, furans and others which require special end-of-life handling. The estimation of Global e-Sustainability Initiative is that about 320 tons of gold (8% of the total gold supply in the world) and throughout the world, 7,500 tons of silver are being used in the electronics manufacturing industry. Around 30-50 million tons of e-waste is produced every year and the production trend is overwhelming. By the end of the decade, the e-waste recycling market is going to touch $44.3 billion, which is more than four (04) times from its existing size. There are three concerns that arise for the crisis of e-waste. The first is the total volume of units of obsolescent electronic items. The second fact is the global problem as the generation of e-waste in vulnerable amount since everywhere there are people. And the third fact is that, the rate of obsolescence of electronic items i.e. 5 -10% yearly. The developing world has forecasted that by the year 2030 the developed country should discard the use of twice numbers of Personal Computers (PC) than developing countries. Moreover, in developing countries the e-waste is processed either by informal sector or being resold or refurbished and resold recycled in an unsafe manner using unskilled labours. Environmental pollution and occupational health hazards are frequently observed due to informal recycling of e-waste. In developed countries, e-waste is collected to recover some precious metals and safely rid of the toxic metals as they have contained but in developing countries, e-waste is collected mainly to recover a few metals of value and the rest are dumped in nearby areas. In developing countries, the laws for restricting hazardous waste are flexible by which the developed countries export their e-waste to developing countries because of low labour wages and the availability of second-hand market.