Estimation Of Future Volumes & Hazardous Waste From Obsolete PCs

Computer waste constitutes a major portion of E-Waste and its management in developing countries like India has become a serious concern due to its exponentially growing volume coupled with unorganized and informal methods of its reuse, recovery and disposal, thereby posing grave environmental and health hazards. This book contains study on estimation of the volume of desktop & notebook computers which will become obsolete in coming 15 years. Future trends of various hazardous and non-hazardous components generated from computer waste in India are also estimated. This study would help the waste management authorities in planning the collection, recycling and land-filling of various types of hazardous wastes estimated to emanate from these obsolete PCs. Our results indicate that obsolete PCs will continue to increase rapidly beyond year 2015 also & long term equilibrium in penetration rate can be achieved sometime in year 2044 i.e. from 30 years from now giving a penetration rate of 1.0269 per capita. Obsolete desktop computer generation at end of 2025 to be around 126 million units and obsolete notebook computers generation at the end of 2025 is estimated to be 900 million units.