E-Waste management is one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the worlwhich household e-waste recycling is most common. It is because nearly we produce 50 million tonnes of household electronics each year as the technology and technical gadgets become more accessible worldwide.   Electronic waste, e-scrap, household e-waste, scrap waste or waste electrical and electronic equipments (WEEE) all describes the discarded electrical or electronic devices

                                      What belongs to Household E-waste?

          Although e-waste is a general term, it can be considered to denote household ewaste items such as refrigerator, air conditioner,  washing machine, television, vacuum cleaner, sewing machine, kitchenhood, electric pan, electric stove, induction stove, microwave oven, robotic vacuum, hair dryer, landline phones, ups batteries, circuit boards,  typewriters, fax machine, fire extinguishers and the medical ewaste equipments like thermometers, blood pressure monitoring devices, diabetes monitoring equipments etc.

               Household ewastes also includes computer scrap items which are the laptops, desktops, speakers, photostat machines, printers, scanners, cameras, mobile phones, plugin cables, adapter cables, network cables, remote controls, CD players, DVD players, keyboards, mouse, gaming joysticks, modem, routers, and the storage devices like hard disk, OTG, pendrives etc. By recycling various kinds of these household ewastes, you are promoting reusability in the environment

Why Household Ewaste is a problem?

        Household E-Waste is said to be a major problem because those kind of electronic product wastes contains toxic substances such as lead, mercury, chromium, cadmium etc which can cause serious health problems. So we need to perform proper disposal of those household ewaste items.

 How to manage this household Ewaste problem?

            Currently, there are various organizations such as NGO, door to door collectors,charity sectors and many recyclable buyers performing electronic wastes collection from various industrial/residential areas. Recently, Department Of Environment (DOE),Malaysia is drafting a new regulation, Environmental Quality (Household Scheduled Waste) Regulation, which under reviewed by Attorney General’s Chambers of Malaysia (AGC Malaysia). Many household ewaste management approaches this issue and have included law enforcement and regulation and the promotion of e-waste recovery activities.

  Household Ewaste Disposal

       According to the Department of Environment (DOE) Malaysia, the household e-waste recycling rate in Malaysia is not more than 25%, which means hundreds of thousands of tonnes of e-waste are disposed of in landfills every year.
       As a citizen, everyone should understand the value of household e-wastes as well as how much environmental damage is caused by improperly disposing household ewastes in landfills, and needs to follow proper recycling practices.

How can we reduce/reuse household ewaste?
            This kind of household e-waste issues can be resolved by the recovery facilities that the country’s ewaste management approaches. Its main aim is to convert those household e-wastes into the source material. By being more mindful about where your household e-waste ends up, you can limit how much you produce and the impact it has on the environment, you are promoting 3R’s (Reduce,Reuse,Recycle).

No matter where you live, there are various safe methods for disposing of household electronic wastes. It is our prime duty to cooperate with proper recycling strategies that the country approaches.