Electronic devices and mobile applications have become a part of everyday life. Fast technological progress and rapid product obsolescence have led to the rapid growth of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). Due to hazardous substances and also substantial amounts of valuable materials contained in electrical and electronic equipment, the European Union has implemented Directives related to WEEE, in order to reduce negative environmental and health impacts and to improve material recovery of valuable substances from WEEE. This paper provides an overview of the WEEE Directive and its implementation to national legislations in Finland, Sweden, and Norway and, further, describes how the nationwide WEEE recovery infrastructures in the Nordic countries have been built. The Nordic WEEE management systems are evaluated from the point of resource efficiency and best practices. Evidently, the WEEE management systems as established in the Nordic countries have advantages because the WEEE collection rates in 2012 were 12 kg/inhab./year, in Finland, 16 kg/inhab./year, in Sweden, and 27 kg/ inhab./year, in Norway, despite their sparsely populated nature. The Swedish and Norwegian experiences, especially, with long history of WEEE recovery indicate that increasing consumer awareness leads to more environmentally sound behaviour and improves recovery efficiency.
Abstract:Protecting and sustaining nature environment are two of the most important conditions regarding economic and social development. While the resources are extracted from and wastes are disposed to the same mother Earth, managing wastes of a value chain has been segmented and treated isolated. This segmentation leads to the partial optimization in waste minimization. This paper proposes a framework that facilitating holistic greening of a value chain so that total waste minimization can be achieved from entire chain's perspective.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.