Last month marked a decade since the E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules came into effect in India. The Rules have been amended a few times since. The most recent amendment is the Draft E-waste Management Rules, 2022, released for public comments in May 2022 by the Environment Ministry. Despite retaining the underlying extended producer responsibility (EPR) framework, the new draft Rules depart significantly from the previous regulations.
E-waste market
One major change is the introduction of a market for e-waste recycling certificates. The draft rules state that producers of e-goods have to ensure that at least 60% of their produced e-waste is recycled by 2023. This shift from collection rate targets (which set targets for the collection of e-waste as a percentage of the quantity of products sold by weight in the market in the previous year) in the current Rules to recycling rate targets in the proposed Rules is another important change.
