Modeling and assessment of e-waste take-back strategies in India

• It is a first, limited attempt to model e-waste take-back policies for a developing country with focus on India.
• Mathematical model proposed incorporates the market realities that exist in such countries.
• Market equilibrium prices and equilibrium profits derived to benchmark the take-back policies.
• Individual take-back scheme returns a win–win opportunity for both the customers and manufacturers.

The problem of growing e-waste (also called as WEEE) quantities in developing countries have prompted governments to plan innovative control measures and to institutionalize environment friendly strategies to mitigate the threats emanating from such waste. In India, e-waste recycling has been primarily a market driven industry. Under India's newly drafted e-waste management handling rules, the producers are expected to introduce and implement EPR regimes as early as possible. The scope of implementing EPR has also been discussed in these guidelines. In this work, we make an attempt to assess different EPR take-back policies and investigate their suitability for the Indian conditions. We use an economic model to ascertain the profitability of different EPR take-back schemes. In order to sustain the higher costs of e-waste recycling, the overall profitability of the e-waste take-back scheme is vital to the success of any e-waste recycling mandate. The results from our modeling clearly show that from the viewpoint of both the consumers and the producers, an individual take-back scheme outperforms the collective take-back scheme. We also describe impacts and implications of these take-back schemes on the model parameters of interest.