A RECYCLE BIN FOR JUNK HARDWARE
BY NAMITHA JAGADEESH
Attero Recycling, named after the Latin word for waste, is a one-of-its-kind Indian firm that's actually making profits by being eco-friendly.
Last August, armed with only a power point presentation, siblings Nitin and Rohan Gupta convinced venture capitalists to back their plan for electronic waste recycling.
Since then, the idea has turned into an 110,000-square foot recycling plant in Rourkee in India, a plant that has converted over 100 tonnes of e-waste from corporate India into recycled material.
Attero Recycling India Pvt Ltd – derived from Attero, the Latin word for waste - processes electronic items no longer in use, such as old computers, laptops and mobile phones into reusable plastic and metal.
In May this year, Attero was the first Indian company to be certified both by the Central Pollution Control Board and the Ministry of Environment and Forests. This ensures recycling at its Rourkee plant follows non-polluting processes specified by the government.
The company, which raised $ 6.3 million from venture funds Draper Fisher Jurvetson and NEA IndoUS Ventures, is recycling e-waste for 50 corporates, including consultancy firms KPMG and Ernst & Young, and electronic goods manufacturer LG Corp.
Gold from e-waste
Founder Nitin Gupta estimates that recycling a computer saves about 30 kilograms of carbon emissions.
Obtaining precious metals such as copper, gold and zinc from e-waste also consumes less energy than mining them.
“Extracting one gram of gold from e-waste uses 1/50th the amount of energy required to extract it from a mine,” explains Gupta. Attero claims to be the only Indian company to extract precious metals from e-waste, offering what it calls ‘end-to-end recycling'. It can recycle about 96% of a computer and 99% of a mobile phone.
“E-waste recycling is nascent even globally, and India is much behind the curve,” says Nitin Gupta. In 2007, when the most recent data was recorded, India generated 380,000 tonnes of electronic waste, according to the MAIT-GTZ e-waste Assessment Study conducted by the Manufacturing Association for Information Technology and GTZ GmbH.
Dumped into rivers…
About 60% of the e-waste is not recycled but stored in warehouses. In India, e-waste is classified under hazardous waste, which makes companies reluctant to open up used electronic gadgets.
“Disposing hazardous waste involves a lot of procedure and rules to be followed, (so) current government legislation is not very encouraging for companies,” rues Nitin Gupta.
Of the 40% e-waste that is not stored, less than 3% is recycled by authorised companies, while the rest is handled by an informal sector, where the goods are passed from vendor to vendor until stripped of all usable parts.
The remaining hazardous waste is often dumped in rivers.
Corporates in India also create different challenges for the recycler. While counterparts in developed markets get paid by companies to dispose e-waste safely, Attero charges nothing.
At times, it even pays corporates for the waste and makes money by selling the recycled materials. “We spend time educating companies on why they should recycle and the environmental impact it has,” says Nitin Gupta.
Spotting a business opportunity
It was a nascent market that prompted the duo to start the company. Founder Rohan Gupta, a chemical engineer from the Regional Engineering College Jaipur, wanted to get rid of an old laptop, but could not find a single company that would dispose it in an eco-friendly manner.
“That's when we realised it was not only an environmental and social problem but also a business opportunity,” says his sibling and co-founder.
The duo studied the electronic waste recycling industry in developed markets such as Europe and Japan before embarking on Attero.
In the days to come, Attero wants to spread awareness of e-waste recycling among individuals as well as corporates. It has joined hands with LG to set up drop boxes across 50 mobile phone service centres across the country, encouraging people to recycle old phones thus.
“The key reason we started the company was to give something back to society,” says Gupta, “And this is as big a challenge as it comes.”
(From Left): Rohan and Nitin, the e-waste warriors.
Namitha Jagadeesh has worked as a business journalist in India for four years, writing on media, technology, entrepreneurship and venture capital for national publications such as Businessworld and Mint. She holds an engineering degree in Instrumentation Technology and began her journalistic career as a city reporter for the national daily, The New Indian Express. She is currently a student of the Erasmus Mundus Journalism Master's programme at Aarhus University, Denmark.
