Muhammad Luqman

Like other parts of the world, Pakistan has been taken by storm by the technological revolution. In big urban centres like Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Faisalabad, and Peshawar, there are specific electronics markets where computers, laptops, tablets, and other electronic gadgets of international and local brands are available in abundance.

The total market size for computers and peripherals in Pakistan is now around $325 million with imports accounting for most of the market share. With the increase in the usage of electronic products, there is a growing amount of e-waste when these devices reach the end of their life cycle. This waste goes to the markets like Lahore’s Hall Road for reassembling and recycling.

Hall Road, Lahore’s largest electronic market, is also home to heaps of e-waste, including broken phones, batteries, appliances, chargers, and computer parts, all sold for throwaway prices by local vendors. Due to the continuous inflow of digital trash from across the country, the godowns in the alleys of the Hall Road are always full to the brim. Besides the locally produced waste, a lot of such junk is specifically imported from developed countries.

Pakistan is one of the largest importers of electronic waste, receiving significant amounts from countries like the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, Dubai, Germany, Spain, South Korea, and Thailand. “The retrieved parts of these trashed gadgets are used to assemble PCs and laptops, while the remaining parts are recycled or dumped,” said Akhtar Ali, who deals in electronic trash at a shop in the Hall Road area. 

Talking to WealthPK, he said the useful parts like keyboards, mouse, and other accessories are sold separately at reasonable prices while the trash comprising metals is recycled at Bund Road and other peripheral localities of Lahore,” Ali revealed. Dozens of factories and warehouses have been set up along Lahore’s Bund Road and Ring Road where hazardous chemicals are used to extract metals from the electronic waste while the remaining material is dumped in the River Ravi via sewage.

Besides Lahore, e-waste recycling, disassembly, and refurbishment are also carried out in Karachi, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, and Peshawar. “The old laptops, desktop computers, condensers, CDs, and fax machines are dipped in toxic chemicals to extract trace amounts of gold, silver, platinum, and other precious metals stored in their circuitry,” said environmentalist Dr Ejaz Ahmad. He said that hazardous fumes and smoke thus produced pollute the environment to a great extent, making breathing difficult for the people living in the adjoining areas.

Talking to WealthPK, the senior research fellow at the Institute of Urbanism, said that the absence of required infrastructure and limited facilities for safe disposal and recycling were responsible for all the problems in Pakistan. Ahmad said that Pakistan was a signatory to the Basel Convention and had ratified it on July 24, 1994. “The convention monitors the movement of toxic garbage such as e-waste.

Despite environmental legislation in Punjab, we have no specific guidelines for electronic waste,” the environmentalist regretted. Health experts believe that the heavy metals, when thrown into water bodies or leached into soil, can adversely affect human health. Heavy metals like lead, aluminum, iron, tin, copper, barium, nickel, zinc, indium, ruthenium, cobalt, palladium, silver, selenium, and rhodium, for instance, are present in any personal computer.

“Mercury and other neurotoxins found in TV screens and monitors can damage the human nervous system,” warned Dr Ehsan Elahi Sheikh, former medical superintendent of a hospital. He said that cadmium found in circuit boards and batteries, contaminates water and can cause cancer in humans. To tackle the e-waste crisis, the experts suggest that Pakistan should embrace solutions like advanced recycling technologies, besides strictly implementing the relevant laws.

Credit: INP-WealthPk