The demand for effective waste management practices is growing, owing to the increased risk of a major issue, that improper disposal of e-Waste releases harmful chemicals like lead on burning that can have fatal impact on human health and issues like bronchitis, kidney damage, and Wilson’s disease can be caused. e-Waste, when recycled improperly can pollute air, soil & water and cause extensive damage to all living beings. Using non-scientific recycling methods carries an environmental cost along with social impact cost & material loss of almost $30 billion.

The Indian e-Waste management market is projected to grow at a rate of 8.4 percent the terms of volume at 14.2 percent in terms of revenue. Pegasus, a waste management company, primarily dealing with e-waste management, is driving the growth of India’s e-waste management industry.

“Pegasus has been built as an integrated waste recycling plant, allowing us to recycle all of the various parts of electronic waste, including metals, copper, aluminum, iron, and other materials”, says Praveen Bhargava, Founder & CEO, Pegasus Waste Management. Additionally, they have a unit for recycling plastic, which allows them to turn it into reusable pellets. In a similar fashion, they also operate a unit for recovering precious metals from printed circuit boards.

Pegasus offers a comprehensive solution for managing e-waste, starting with advising big consumers and new producers to handle the transportation to recycling the goods, and finally following the government circular. “Pegasus provide the destruction certification to its customers which includes Producers, Manufacturers, Bulk Consumers etc, who can then submit this certificate to the CPCB once the full process has been completed in accordance with The E-waste (Management) rules 2016 of the CPCB”, says Pawan Kalra, President & COO, Pegasus Waste Management.

The firm has a proper flowchart of the procedures to be followed which have been placed at various points throughout the facility. Furthermore, they have advanced machinery which require less manpower. “The lack of awareness among the majority of bulk consumers & other consumers about the proper way to dispose of e-Waste is a major challenge. As such, Pegasus also provides consulting services & runs awareness programs aimed at making consumers more aware of the proper channel to dispose of their electronic equipment”, adds Pawan Kalra. He also described an easy step by step sourcing mechanism (shown below) about how and from where the e-Waste is sourced.

“Pegasus possesses its own PCB recycling technology to recover precious metals. PCB is the most toxic component of E-waste and needs advanced treatment. Toxic elements are properly separated and sent to TSDF, says Praveen Bhargava. Pegasus is well equipped to recycle all new e-Waste given in New e-Waste (Management) Rule 2022.

“Pegasus is the only e-Waste management firm using environmentally sustainable methods. Each method has been carefully planned to be both environmentally and socially sustainable. According to the UN guidelines, we are aiming to accomplish a few Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Pegasus has no procedures in the recycling facility that emits carbon dioxide & also no wastewater is discharged, all the waste water is treated in ETP & STP and reused. All solid waste is used in the right sustainable ways", says Praveen Bhargava

Future Roadmap
Pegasus presently has a single recycling plant in Binola. The main issue is transportation, as it is prohibitively expensive to source materials and transport them from another region of India. To render the process more efficient, Pegasus intends to establish at least two more new plants, one in West India and one in South India in the near future. Currently, Pegasus has a scalable capacity of 40,000 MT per annum; however, they wish to increase this number to 100,000 MT by making certain investments. This will be used in the two new facilities. The target is to begin the first plant during the first half of 2023 and complete the subsequent one between 2024 and 2025.