Articles by Manvel Alur

Karnataka presently generates around 500 tonnes of biomedical waste per month. Over 70% of this ends up in landfills, contaminating soil, water and air. Part of this includes medicines, which has only increased with the COVID-19 pandemic. While hospitals and clinics account for the bulk generation of the waste, they are governed by the Hazardous and Biomedical Waste Management Rules 2016, set out for them. This ensures that many of them follow some basic guidelines on responsible disposal of bio-medical waste.However, at the household level, there appear to be glaring gaps in the manner in which medical waste generated is…

E-waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams and India is the 5th largest generator of e-waste. Bengaluru is the third largest generator of e-waste in the country, producing close to 1,00,000 tons of e-waste annually which is likely to grow by 500% by 2020. Presently in India, more than 90% of e-waste ends up in the informal sector for recycling with serious repercussions on human health and the environment. The informal sector works on small scale with minimal facilities and equipment to take care of the hazardous elements like lead, mercury, cadmium etc. present in the e-waste. E-waste…