Our Mission
Turning Panadura's E-Waste Crisis into Opportunity

This project was born out of frustration and hope. While studying at the University of Westminster, I kept seeing photos and news from home — piles of discarded phones, laptops, chargers and appliances accumulating in backyards, streets, and informal dumps across Panadura and the wider Western Province.

Sri Lanka generates between 100,000 and 175,000 metric tons of e-waste every year, with the Western Province (including Panadura, Kalutara, Colombo corridor) responsible for a disproportionately large share due to higher population density, urbanisation and consumption of electronics. Very little of this waste is formally collected or recycled — most ends up burned, buried, or dismantled unsafely by informal workers without protection, releasing heavy metals, flame retardants and other toxins into soil, water and air.

Traditional awareness campaigns and government collection drives exist, but participation remains low. Why? Because there is no real incentive for the average household to bother separating and delivering e-waste. Informal scrap buyers offer very little money, and formal channels are inconvenient or unknown.

“If we want people to recycle properly, we must make it financially and emotionally rewarding — not just morally correct.”

That realisation became the core idea behind E-Block Rewards: combine immediate token rewards (50 EBR per verified kilogram) with blockchain transparency so every participant can see exactly where their waste goes and trust that the system is fair.

Blockchain is not used here for hype — it solves real problems in this context:

• Immutable records prevent double-counting or fraud
• Public ledger builds trust in a market where people are used to being cheated
• Token rewards can eventually be redeemed or traded, creating ongoing economic incentive
• Traceability from bin → aggregator → certified recycler supports compliance reporting for partners and authorities

Our long-term vision is modest but realistic: achieve meaningful increase in formal e-waste collection in Panadura (aiming for 20–30% participation growth in the first two years), demonstrate a working model that can be replicated in other Sri Lankan towns, and contribute to national efforts to manage e-waste more responsibly.

This aligns directly with UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and Goal 13 (Climate Action), as well as Sri Lanka’s National Policy on Waste Management and Extended Producer Responsibility initiatives.