Handling Electronic Waste Flows: On the Effectiveness of Producer Responsibility in a Globalizing World

Abstract

This paper estimates the magnitude of worldwide Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) flows and assesses the impact of policies such as extended producer responsibility on future global WEEE flows. Local disposal is still common practice in the USA, while increasing quantities are exported from the USA, the EU and Japan to China and India. Once local dumping under controled conditions is reduced in developed regions in favour of exporting WEEE to regions with less strict environmental legislation, such as West Africa, this will create locally a serious threat for the environment and public health. Material recycling in a globalized economy is a new development, enforced by many governments and strongly promoted in the EU. Although material recycling is to be preferred over export and dumping, further developments in waste recycling, such as regional high level recovery, are the challenge from a sustainable development point of view