The institute informed that researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IIT Roorkee), are inventing and developing sustainable technologies to tackle plastic and e-waste.

A research group led by Professor K K Pant, Director of IIT Roorkee (formerly part of IIT Delhi), is focusing to develop sustainable technology to tackle the ever-growing hazard of plastic waste and e-waste along with the generation of wealth through a zero-waste discharge concept, the statement said.

IIT Roorkee informed that they developed e-waste recycling procedures in accordance with Indian ‘Smart Cities’ & ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ initiatives through a zero-waste discharge concept.

“The proposed closed-loop recycling approach can potentially be advanced and utilized as a viable environmentally harmless alternative to traditionally used acid-leaching processes posing hazardous risks,” IIT Roorkee said.

Elaborating on the significance of such research, Professor K K Pant said it is necessary to generate sustainable procedures to handle plastic and e-waste, being developed in enormous quantities in India, particularly with the exponential growth in the use of electronic devices. If such methods are not developed and executed across the nation at the earliest, the e-waste could lead to long-term ecological and environmental degradation.

Further, the Professor added that the closed-loop recycling procedure offered by the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee researchers can potentially be scaled-up and operated as a practicable environmentally-benign alternative to traditionally used acid-leaching techniques posing immense dangerous risks.