Over 1.38 million PCs become obsolete annually. The quantum of e-waste annually produced in India is 1.46 lakh tonnes. Mumbai alone throws away 19,000 tonne of e-waste every year, says Dataquest.As per a study done recently by Saahas, a Bangalore-based NGO, the city generates around 8,000 tonnes of e-waste every year. 20 to 25 are the minimum number of computers procured by an average scale scrap dealer per month. In fact, a dealer revealed that he sells old PCs to a scrap dealer at as low as Rs 100 a piece.

Statistics reveal that India has produced about 1,50,000 tonnes till date, which is annually growing at 300 percent and is likely to reach nine million tonnes by 2012, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). A report claims that India's production of high-tech waste is far higher than anticipated earlier and has generated around 1,46,000 tonnes of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) till 2006, including computers, TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines.

30 million computers are thrown out every year in the US alone, and almost 80 percent of this is dumped in India and China. In short, India is becoming a dumping ground for the global e-waste. Which is a scary thought.

Why am I talking about these things? If you look at the cover story in this issue, you will see that worldwide, people are waking up to the dangers of e-waste and use of hazardous materials in IT products.

A lot more vendors are trying to adopt environmental policies and introduce products which are RoHS-compliant. But sadly, very few of them have worked out details or policies about the correct dumping of e-waste and not much of this is available in the public domain.

Vendors are facing an increasing pressure to conform to the RoHS directive and save the world from becoming a vast waste land. To give vendors a break, a marginal few of them are doing their bit to ensure that this happens. They recycle, take back old machines and even try to dispose it in the most environmentally friendly fashion.

But they hit a stumbling block when it comes to communicating to their customers about why they are going green and how this will impact the environment and users as well. Customers, especially in India, are least bothered about environmental issues, unless they are directly impacted by it. Therefore, the vendors are at a loss how to market their green stance and also leverage on this to push the greener products.

One problem vendors face is that when they start revamping their facilities to roll out greener products, the prices of these products will be marginally higher than that of the regular ones. Most vendors fear that this will undermine their bottomline and want their channel to help them convince customers to adopt RoHS compliant products.

What is difficult in this approach is translating the tangible benefits that a customer can gain in the long run by opting for green products. This is where, as channel partners, you can play the most significant role.

Green products have lower power consumption, which means lower electricity bills in the long term. These products also have a longer life cycle, which means lower TCO. So when you are convincing your customer to go for virtualization and centralization of IT resources, will not just reduce their cost in hardware deployment and management, but will also mean smaller incremental future investments.

Convince them to shift to teleworking, remote conferencing and collaboration technologies that allow unnecessary travel to be avoided, These permit their employees to be more productive even while they are commuting or are not in the office, besides saving on costs.

You can also talk them into adopting some green standards themselves centered around reduce, replace and re-use. You are an important block in this jigsaw of going green. Make sure you pitch the right approach to your customer to make this world a greener and better place. This is your chance to do the environment a favor while doing business. Not a bad thought, is it?

Think about it.

vinita bhatia
vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in

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