Recycling

Biography

Biography: Sandhya Prajapati

Abstract

Lead acid battery usage is colossal in railways, transportation, telecommunication, automobiles and many other sectors and is further increasing with solar and wind schemes launched by Government. More than 50% of world lead demand is met by the secondary lead production. In a developing country like India instead of having sufficient amount of lead available for recycling we are forced to import it from other countries like Australia, USA and Korea. According to the data available only a fraction of batteries is collected for recycling while proper regulation is there for used battery collection. Retailers collect the batteries by consumer authorized smelters get the spent batteries through open auction by Metal and Scrap Trading Corporation (MSTC). MSTC is providing limited auction of batteries because the prize quoted by these smelters is quite low which is not profitable to MSTC. Thus because of low battery collection these smelters are working below their full capacity. Even industries prefer to buy lead from the unlicensed unit (backyard smelters), because the cost of secondary lead coming from unauthorized smelters is low as no pollution control equipment is used which leads to the problem of emission of lead dust, fumes and SO2. This pollutes the ecosystem severely and responsible for health disorders. Waste water from Indian Lead’s plant contains 615 times more lead than is permissible under Indian regulation. Thus the present system not only entails for lead import but also leads to environment misbalance. So the regulation is not enough if not implemented properly. Unauthorized smelting should be punishable offence as it is also responsible for several cattle deaths in Delhi. At every step, proper data collection should be recorded if not then penalty should be there to avoid black spots; so that the survey of annual reports leads us to overcome problems of existing system and come up with a better recycling system.