Transforming waste to worth: How Attero recycles e-waste, batteries, and rare earths for India’s self-sufficiency

India’s growth story is usually told through shining malls, humming tech parks, and a digital economy that touches every household. But there’s another narrative unfolding quietly in the shadows — the story of what we throw away. Mountains of obsolete phones, laptops, spent lithium-ion batteries, and discarded devices rich in rare earth elements pile up each year, feeding an informal economy of kabadiwalas and backroom smelters. It is an industry worth billions, but one that exacts a brutal cost: toxic fumes, wasted metals, and unsafe working conditions.

Back in 2008, there was no real formal concept of e-waste recycling in India — the issue was largely unrecognised in policy and public imagination, and most electronic waste was handled informally without regulated collection or environmentally sound processing.

A problem evoking a holistic solution

What happens to electronic devices once they reach the end of their life cycle? That question became the stepping stone for Attero, a Noida-based e-waste, lithium-ion batteries recycling and rare earth recycling company. Founded in 2008 by Rohan Gupta and Nitin Gupta, the company was born out of a shared passion for deep tech and sustainable innovation — and from something as ordinary as an unwanted laptop.

For Attero, e-waste isn’t garbage; it’s a resource waiting to be recovered. Over the years, this vision has grown into an enterprise that extracts critical minerals with near-perfect efficiency. With 46+ patents, a conviction that “nothing is waste until it is wasted,” and global expansion on the horizon, Attero is reshaping how India thinks about resources.

E-waste: The scale of the challenge

As reported by Redseer, by FY24, India was generating 3.8 million metric tonnes of e-waste, nearly double the volume recorded in FY18, and projections suggest this could climb to around 5 million tonnes annually by 2030. While the e-waste management market is expanding steadily, Indian policy remains the decisive factor in shaping outcomes. The government’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework, first introduced in the E-Waste (Management) Rules and updated in 2022, mandates producers to collect and channel a fixed proportion of the electronic goods they place in the market for authorised recycling. Stricter enforcement of these targets, along with the expansion of licensed facilities, is expected to gradually shift more volumes into the formal sector, which today processes only a fraction of the waste.

Yet, forecasts indicate that even by FY35, formal players may handle only about 40% of India’s e-waste, leaving the majority with informal collectors and processors who operate outside regulatory oversight.

This is where companies like Attero come in, as their work aligns with India’s policy push, showing how innovation and compliance can turn a regulatory requirement into a resource opportunity.

Lithium-Ion batteries and rare earths: India’s next frontier

Beyond traditional e-waste, India is also facing an emerging challenge and opportunity in recycling lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) and recovering rare earth elements (REEs). With the rapid growth of electric mobility, renewable energy storage, and portable electronics, the volume of used batteries is rising sharply. Government initiatives such as the National Electric Mobility Mission and the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for advanced chemistry cells have accelerated domestic manufacturing, but they also highlight the urgent need for robust collection and recycling infrastructure.

Establishing formal recycling channels for LiBs will help India recover critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, while rare earth recovery from discarded electronics can reduce the country’s dependence on China-controlled global supply chains. Together, these efforts form a strategic pathway toward self-reliance in the materials that power the clean-energy future, and Attero is among the few Indian players ready with globally patented technology and large-scale recycling capabilities to make it happen.

Recognising this strategic gap, Attero has announced plans to scale its rare earth recycling capacity, strengthening India’s ability to recover critical materials domestically. The company aims to cater to 70% of India’s rare earth element (REE) requirements within the next two years.

Attero’s tech: Mining above ground

Attero reports recovery efficiency of up to 98% and purity levels of 99.9%, rivaling conventional mining. Building on these efficiencies, the company’s rare earth scale-up positions it among the few global players capable of recovering high-purity rare earth elements such as Neodymium, Praseodymium, and Dysprosium—critical components in EV motors, wind turbines, and high-performance electronics. The scale-up supports India’s National Critical Mineral Mission and strengthens domestic supply chains for advanced manufacturing and clean energy technologies.

The technology behind those figures is deceptively simple when explained, but the innovation is deep. Attero relies on an advanced hydrometallurgical process, a chemical-based method that avoids the high emissions of conventional smelting, to recover valuable materials with high efficiency. Lithium carbonate recovery, for example, uses a precipitation process that Attero has refined. “Think of a glass of water with sugar dissolved in it. If you want to replace sugar with salt, there’s only so much you can displace. But when you heat it, the limit increases. Similarly, we modified the operating conditions of precipitation — temperature, pressure, and so on — to bring recovery from 50% to 98%,” explained Nitin.

Printed circuit boards (PCBs), the “brains” of electronic devices, are another frontier. Informal recyclers throw whole boards into furnaces, consuming vast amounts of collector metal and achieving only 75% recovery. Attero developed a patented Component Removal Machine that separates and grades components before smelting. The result: 20 times less collector metal needed, with recovery rates rising to 98%.

Reengineering India’s e-waste ecosystem

Technology, however, is only half the story. India’s e-waste supply chain remains fragmented, dominated by traders and middlemen who dictate arbitrary prices and capture most of the profits. Attero’s challenge has been to create systems that can pull material out of this opaque network and channel it into formal recycling.

Selsmart, Attero’s direct-to-consumer take-back platform for used electronics and appliances, now runs in more than 25 cities and handles around 30,000 orders a month. It promises households door-to-door pickup, instant payouts, and secure data wiping, handling nearly 30,000 orders a month and processing over 15,000 tonnes of e-waste each year. The appeal lies in combining India’s instinct for thrift with convenience. “Indians love value. Nothing in our households is wasted. The concept of getting paid for scrap is ingrained in us,” said Nitin. What was missing was the trust, and Selsmart offers that.

MetalMandi, launched in 2025, extends the model to businesses and scrap dealers. Using an AI-driven pricing engine that factors in global metal exchange rates, GST, local demand, and even product-specific material content, it ensures consistent valuations across nearly one lakh categories of scrap. “A scrap dealer in Lucknow was getting a different price from one in Vishakhapatnam for the same waste. MetalMandi brings transparency and fairness wherever you are in the country,” said Nitin.

Philosophy: Materials reborn

For India, recycling is more than compliance — it is a strategic tool. Reliance on imports leaves the country exposed to geopolitical shocks, while recycling strengthens domestic supply resilience and cuts environmental costs.

Attero’s impact illustrates this opportunity: its lithium carbonate has a 99% lower greenhouse gas footprint than mined equivalents, graphite 98% lower, and copper 68% lower. This philosophy — captured in the company’s line Materials Reborn — turns waste into usable resources, feeding the supply chain without mining. Metals can be recycled infinitely, offering a vast, environmentally friendly resource that lies on top of the Earth.

Nitin’s vision is a truly circular India, where all waste is collected, recycled, and used to meet material demand, eliminating import dependence and positioning the country as a global recycling hub.

From waste to opportunity

Attero’s story began with a laptop that no one knew how to discard. Today, it is a company with 46+ patents, a deep-tech backbone, and global ambitions. It has built processes that turn waste into high-purity metals, platforms that connect consumers and dealers to formal recycling, and a vision that links sustainability with mineral security.

“Every device we recycle is one less in a landfill and one more building block for India’s resource independence,” says Nitin Gupta. And perhaps, as he suggests, the next time someone buys gold, it may not come from a mine at all — but from a discarded phone or battery.

Note to the reader: This article has been produced on behalf of the brand by HT Brand Studio and does not have journalistic/editorial involvement of Mint.