India's billion-dollar e-waste empire
16 comments
·August 29, 2025latchkey
My buddy owned a small motorcycle repair shop in the middle of Saigon. He was on a street full of other similar shops.
The guy next door to him had a small battery recycling shop. They'd sit out on the street in the hot sun, all day long, banging open the batteries with hammers, dust and toxic stuff flying everywhere. Nasty shit, zero concern for health.
I can only imagine this happening on a global scale, with far more toxic substances.
alephnerd
Yep. Sadly, this is how manufacturing "actually" works.
Everyone on HN loves to daydream about automated assembly and additive manufacturing, but almost all manufacturing is dependent on dirty industries like oil (fertilizers, textiles, plastics), rare earth elements, coal (steel), and others.
When I'd visit my SO's family back in VN or my extended family back in India, it's easy to see why manufacturing is so cost effective in those countries - the only lever low margins industries have is manpower, and that requires you to devalue life to a certain extent.
This is why my parents and my SO immigrated to America.
SoftTalker
This was the USA and Britian in their early industrial periods.
Now, oil and gas field work, mining, iron and steel processing, and other raw materials extraction is either automated or high-paying unionized manual labor. The same will happen in other developing economies.
the__alchemist
It depends. China has impressive automation and vertical integration.
alephnerd
You cannot decouple labor and environmental abuse from low margins industries that are upstream of high value manufacturing, even in China.
Every one of those automotive robots uses chips that contain REEs that is heavily sourced from Myanmar (a country in a state of civil war) and processed in poorer Chinese provinces like Yunnan and Guangxi. The steel used to build the casing for those robots will have been forged using metallurgical grade coal that (best case) was sourced from Australia's Carmichael coal mine who's operator has evaded paying taxes and overriden Australia's labor unions with the full backing of both parties.
Even today, the median household disposable income in China is in the $300-400/mo range [0], and labor abuse remains a problem in much of industrial China [1]
But that's the only way you can build stuff. Commodities are inherently commodified (it's in the name) - you cannot manufacture without commodities upstream. You will always need plastics, steel, coal, rare earth minerals, etc so someone will always be commodified (or synonym - exploited).
[0] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202504/t202504...
[1] - https://www.somo.nl/the-hidden-human-costs-linked-to-global-...
alephnerd
E-Waste recycling is a major pillar of India's Critical Minerals Strategy [0][1]
The Indian government explicitly exempted specific types of e-waste from import fees and provided additional subsidies such that such waste would come to India in order to be reprocessed [2]. Additionally, the Indian government is allocating around $200M in subsidies explicitly for companies to import, recycle, and process E-Waste within India [3][4] plus additional funding to add capacity.
These are the exact same steps China took in the 2000s as well with almost the exact same word-for-word criticism [5][6], yet it helped them solidify their REE and Green economy to what it is today.
And this is why rare earth processing left America - it is a VERY VERY VERY dirty industry with very low margins. There is no way to get around treating unskilled workers in this industry as expendables - even safety gear can destroy the margins in this industry.
You need to choose between whether you want sub-$10K EVs and low cost solar panels like in China and India OR strong worker protections in their upstream industries like REE processing. You can only choose one.
That said, for every abusive processor, you have less abusive one's as well [7][8]
[0] - https://mines.gov.in/admin/download/649d4212cceb01688027666....
[1] - https://primuspartners.in/docs/documents/Final%2020%20Aug_Ra...
[2] - https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2112...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/land-use-biodiversity...
[4] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
[5] - https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/docum...
[6] - https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/world/asia/18iht-waste.1....
[7] - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oesZJxrVgeU&pp=0gcJCRsBo7VqN5t...
goalieca
>You need to choose between whether you want sub-$10K EVs and low cost solar panels like in China and India OR strong worker protections in their upstream industries like REE processing. You can only choose one.
With globalism, we got cheap goods and didn't worry about [domestic] worker safety. But, i don't doubt that innovation will happen if we bring stuff back on-shore. There's no motivation to improve processes and innovate if you can just cheaply externalize everything.
alephnerd
I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of HN.
Commenters here both want dirt cheap green tech AND workers rights, but it's a choice between one or the other becuase low margins industries are inherently exploitative, because there are no other levers.
Saying improving processes and innovation is just a "deus ex machina", because any sort of automation depends on these upstream components as well.
I agree that bringing industries back on-shore can help spark innovation, but we also need to be realistic. Most REEs (ignore lithium) just don't exist in large quantities in the US, Canada, or the EU, and we simply cannot onshore EVERY industry, because margins are so low that tariffs don't alleviate them either.
You can't compete when manufacturing in China and India are themselves in the midst of transitioning to automation as well, further driving down margins.
We need to be strategic about the industries we target with tariffs AND incentives, but also recognize that vast swathes of low margins low skill manufacturing and resource processing is never returning to the US unless we adopt the same kind of labor whitewashing practices Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea does [0][1]
[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/world/asia/south-korea-li...
[1] - https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/03/29/national/probe-...
Spivak
We can't on-shore manufacturing because labor is expensive and automation is a pipedream. But also China and India are automating their manufacturing?
mschuster91
> There is no way to get around treating unskilled workers in this industry as expendables - even safety gear can destroy the margins in this industry.
Actually, there is. The way is called tariffs - an instrument to offset externalities like environment and labor protection dumping.
SR2Z
They will also make it so expensive to process e-waste that it would probably end up in a landfill.
alephnerd
Hypothetically yes, but in 2025 it is impossible to do so on critical minerals/REEs.
The entire processing chain's IP and production capacity is in Asia. Even in South Korea and Japan, workers in these industries are given third world safety protections with temp workers imported from Vietnam, Indonesia, and poorer areas of China, as was seen with the Hwaseong battery factory fire a couple months ago [0][1]
Throwing environmental and workers rights tariffs on REEs and e-waste processing means the upstream supply chain for the entirety of electronics, automotive, aerospace, and every other manufacturing industry is ground to a halt, and you have to depend on foreign countries anyhow but with even less leverage.
[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/world/asia/lithium-batter...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/world/asia/south-korea-li...
tomdickandharry
[dead]
Andrew has a few videos about waste and the waste industry in countries such as India, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
For instance, in Delhi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fojw7yviYU