The Environmental Injustice of e-Waste Regulation in India: Invisibilisation of Exploitation and Pollution in the Less Controlled Margins and Peripheries

Using the case of electronic waste management in India, this contribution looks at the relocation of unauthorised recycling activities to less controlled areas, making the exploitation of the workers who dismantle them a little more invisible. Given the globalised nature of the sector, e-waste trade has been widely described as a global environmental injustice akin to ‘garbage imperialism’. As a counterpoint to these discourses, other analyses have revealed the existence of highly dynamic informal repair and recycling economies in the South. This is where the ambivalence of this controversial sector lies, between rejection by some and opportunity for others. Following on from this work, we propose to rethink electronic waste flows at a more intra-regional level in order to examine the new socio-spatial forms of injustice, and opportunities, that latest developments in the regulation of the recycling sector are creating. In India, the introduction of reforms designed by and for the large groups in the organised sector has rendered the work of a multitude of small informal labour illegal. This artisanal recycling, based on low operating costs, has nevertheless not stopped but is now spreading clandestinely to the outskirts of the cities, and especially in rural areas, where a workforce that can be bent to mercy is available and where health controls are virtually non-existent, creating new local forms of environmental injustice.