By 4am, Abrar, aged 50, reaches Seelampur, a small neighbourhood in the capital’s north-east suburbs, which is home to India’s largest electrical-waste market.
The market’s narrow lanes are lined with small scrapstores overflowing with piles of broken computers, telephones, TVs, microwaves, washing machines, ACs and end-of-life batteries.
Abrar is one of more than 50,000 informal workers, including women and children, who make a living sifting through thrown-out goods to recover valuable materials that can be recycled and eventually reused in modern technologies.
In recent years, Abrar and his peers have become the backbone of a fast-growing network of start-ups seeking to extract energy transition minerals from e-waste in a process known as “urban mining”.
Seelampur’s e-waste market is a vast treasure trove for the highly-coveted metals and minerals the world needs to shift from fossil fuels to clean energy systems and curb climate change.
Charging cables for everyday items contain copper, a conductive metal which is used in virtually all electricity-related technologies. The aluminium in electronic components is needed to manufacture solar panels.
But most sought after still are batteries. The majority of electronics such as mobile phones, laptops and vapes use batteries that contain lithium, cobalt and nickel. The same minerals are used to make batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and storing renewable energy.
