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During the recent past, electronic waste (E-waste) has emerged as a major category of toxic waste in both global North and global South. Particularly, the emerging economies such as India is a major contributor to the E-waste volume in the world today. Accordingly, we attempted to carry out this study to evaluate the journey of equipments from 'electronic products' to 'electronic waste' in the city of New Delhi in India. The purpose was to carry out an exclusive pilot study with the potential to replicate the same at a larger scale in major Indian metropolis which are mostly the hubs of intense E-waste generation. The case of mobile phones (both smartphones and feature phones) was considered as the key representative. A structured questionnaire survey was carried out with 334 purposively selected respondents in the city of New Delhi. Among several other noteworthy findings, we observed that there exists a gap among purchase behaviour of mobile phones, awareness on E-waste and disposal behaviour of these phones. For instance, the relatively high knowledge/awareness about E-waste is yet to be reflected in consumers' responsible purchase and disposal behaviour. We argue that creating awareness among citizens is central to a sustainable E-waste management system and effective policy instruments.

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The stream of E-waste has observed a considerable intensification in the recent decade rendering its management a major challenge to the contemporary world. Considering the complexities associated with this toxic stream of waste, this paper is an attempt to review the existing E-waste governance in the emerging economies, taking into consideration the evidence and experiences of a number of representative countries. Emerging economies are instrumental in the growth and sustenance of the global economy today. However, certain issues such as the governance of E-waste is yet to be studied adequately in these countries and still remains an unexplored area of research. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations along with South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico are considered as representatives of the emerging countries. A systematic literature search has been carried out in Scopus and Web of Science to aid our study. A bibliometric analysis was carried out to situate the research scenario in India and South Africa in particular. We observe that the European Union's landmark WEEE Directive and RoHS Directive have considerable influence on the policies of most of the emerging economies considered for our study purpose. We argue that it is imperative to have a local specific, systematic, organize and stepwise approach towards formulating and implementing the E-waste policies in the respective countries. The fact that, a few representatives from the well-known emerging economies are underrepresented in the E-waste research necessitates adequate attention from the scientific community and policymakers. Overall, it could be concluded that, barring a handful of representative countries, E-waste governance in the emerging economies are yet to be addressed comprehensively both by themselves and the global North.

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