What recycling percentage must an electronics producer meet under India's e-waste rules, and what changes if it started selling recently?

Schedule III of India's E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022 sets 60% for 2023-24 and 2024-25, 70% for 2025-26 and 2026-27, and 80% from 2027-28, applied to the equipment placed on the market one product life earlier. A producer with fewer years of sales than that product life follows Schedule IV instead.

Schedule III: producers with a full sales history

• 2023-24 and 2024-25: 60% of the quantity placed on the market in year Y-X.
• 2025-26 and 2026-27: 70% of the quantity placed on the market in year Y-X.
• 2027-28 and 2028-29 onwards: 80% of the quantity placed on the market in year Y-X.
• Y is the target year. X is the average life of that product. Rule 13(2) says the product life period is as laid down by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), so CPCB's list is where to find X.
• The note says the targets shall be reviewed and may be increased after 2028-29. Importers of used equipment carry 100% extended producer responsibility (EPR) for the imported material after end of life, if it is not re-exported.

Schedule IV: producers who started selling recently

This applies where the number of years of sales is less than the average life of the product in CPCB's guidelines. The target is a share of the sales figure of an earlier year: 15% of 2021-22 sales for 2023-24, 20% of 2022-23 sales for 2024-25, and 20% of the sales of the financial year two years back from 2025-26 onwards. Once your years of sales equal the product life, Schedule III applies.

Solar panels are outside these targets

Both schedules say recycling targets do not apply to waste from solar photovoltaic modules, panels or cells.

What to keep

• Sales by product code and year, in tonnes, going back one product life.
• The product life CPCB lists for your item, so you use the right X.
• Certificates bought, with recycler names, for the quarterly returns.

Two producers in 2025-26, example numbers

• Schedule III: average life 6 years (example), so Y-X = 2019-20. Sold 1,000 tonnes then. Target 70% x 1,000 = 700 tonnes
• Schedule IV: sold 500 tonnes in 2023-24. Target 20% x 500 = 100 tonnes, because 2025-26 uses sales two years back

The lives and tonnages are examples. Use the lives in the CPCB guidelines. The percentages are the rule's own.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into records, so the diesel and power your site uses are on file. These rules are filed on government portals, outside Senseible's records.

• Refurbishing certificate: deferring e-waste targets
• Appliance end-of-life emissions and e-waste rules
• Waste certificate validity and buying limits
• BRSR reporting

Sources: MoEFCC, E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022, rule 13 and Schedules III and IV

Last reviewed 2026-11-05. The schedules are as first notified. I could not read the 2023 and 2024 amendments; check them. Check the CPCB portal for the product life of your item.