Singhal’s founding of Karo Sambhav is the result of a lifelong passion for environmental protection. He has a master’s degree from Sweden’s International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE). He was also trained by Thomas Lindhqvist who coined the principle of “extended producer responsibility” (EPR), which argues that producers must hold responsibility for what happens with products after consumers are done using them.
Singhal finds it fascinating that humans are the only species that generate waste. “We turn elements into compounds, components, and then products. But converting those products back into their elemental form—how do we create the second part of that product system?” He worked on this problem during his stint with Nokia in Finland, Singapore, and later India.
In 2012 the Indian government introduced new e-waste management rules that oblige companies that release products in the market to also collect those products back for recycling. Five years after that policy change, Singhal felt compelled to launch an outfit that could help producer organizations to go about this expectation transparently.
“Until and unless there was good clean implementation, the policy would die down, and the government would not apply the same principle to other product categories,” he says. Several global tech giants—driven both by a need to meet regulations in their own businesses and a desire to bring change at the grassroots in India—supported him, including Mi India, the country’s largest smartphone and smart TV brand.
Mi India partnered with Karo Sambhav to help its customers get their e-waste picked up from their homes or dropped it off at its stores across the country.
“At Mi India, we believe that our focus should not only be on responsible recycling, but also on awareness generation. Karo Sambhav is creating awareness with schools and bulk consumers of electronic waste through awareness events. They are working very closely with the informal sector and helping them embrace the formal sector and they have succeeded in doing it,” says Prateik Das, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Lead, Mi India.
“But they can’t do it alone. All stakeholders, including the government, brands, customers, dealers, informal sector, recyclers, and producer responsibility organizations (like Karo Sambhav) need to come together and build a self-sustained ecosystem. As per the current rule, the entire liability of collecting and recycling e-waste is on brands only and because of this, the end result is not always so impressive.”
