Regulation Of E-Waste In India: Study Of The Existing Environmental Legal Regime
- IJLLR Journal
- 1 hour ago
- 1 min read
Baskar B, Ph.D. Research Scholar, Department of Law, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, Padur, Chennai
Prof. (Dr.) V.R. Dinkar, Dean, Department of Law, Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science, Padur, Chennai (Supervisor)
ABSTRACT
India has built an ostensibly comprehensive legal architecture to govern electronic waste, anchored in the “Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and the E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022” as amended in 2024. This article argues that the regime exhibits a structural implementation deficit in which formal regulatory sophistication exceeds enforcement capacity, and it situates that argument within the scholarship on extended producer responsibility, environmental governance, and the informal economies of the Global South. Three problems are examined. First, the conversion of “Extended Producer Responsibility” (EPR) into a market in tradable certificates risks decoupling legal compliance from actual recycling, a risk now concretised in fraud allegations before the National Green Tribunal and in litigation by major producers over the 2024 floor-price regime. Second, the informal sector, which processes the bulk of national e-waste in clusters such as Delhi’s Seelampur, remains formally unintegrated and unprotected, reproducing the “informal paradox” documented across the Global South. Third, the regulators charged with oversight lack the resources for credible verification. Engaging both the strongest defence of the certificate model and the doctrinal foundations of Indian environmental law, the article argues that, unless reoriented toward verification, integration, and eco-design, the framework risks operating as symbolic law.
Keywords: E-waste; environmental law; Extended Producer Responsibility; informal sector; environmental justice; circular economy; India.
