Blockchain-based E-waste Management in 5G Smart Communities

With our increasing reliance on technology, the amount of e-waste generated after their life cycle ends is increasing at an exponential rate. Going by this rate, we'll have an equivalent amount of carbon footprint as the transportation industry, only by the smartphone segment by 2035. We can imagine the total carbon footprint if we extend this to all the other numerous electronic gadgets we use. With the increasing volume of e-waste, the chances of these toxic non-biodegradable elements polluting the environment are astronomical. This problem is being addressed by various nations and laws to regulate the waste have been passed in recent years. The Indian Government has placed E-Waste (Management and Handling) Rules in 2011 which forms a part of the Environment Protection Act to ensure coherent disposal of e-waste. However, a rather large percentage of e-waste in India is still not regulated and it runs vastly by unorganized sectors. We provide a solution to the above problem by proposing an efficient e-waste management technique by using blockchain in the 5G scenario. Our solution keeps track of the e-waste generated and we provide an incentive-based system where users are encouraged to channelize their e-waste through government regulated agencies which efficiently dispose of them in an environment-friendly manner. We propose a public-private partnership (PPP) model for implementing this, which can generate thousands of jobs by organizing this unregulated sector with huge underlying potential.