Challenges in Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Management
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sustainability and Applications".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2016) | Viewed by 57859
Special Issue Editor
Interests: critical raw materials, emerging technologies, life cycle thinking, material flow analysis, resource management, Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
With the advent of the Information Society and the steadily growing consumption of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) worldwide, society is facing the challenge of dealing with increasing amounts of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in a sustainable, responsible way. WEEE is a particularly complex waste stream that can be a source of valuable resources, but which also bears the potential to cause significant environmental impacts. In different regions of the world, e.g., in Europe, regulations, policies, and collection and recovery systems based on extended producer responsibility (EPR) have been implemented. Nevertheless, many issues remain to be resolved, including illegal trafficking of WEEE, the response of WEEE management systems to ever faster changes in the composition of EEE (due to e.g., miniaturization, embedding of electronics, introduction of nanomaterials and -technologies) or in the recovery of (critical) raw materials that have so far not been considered, such as indium or rare earth elements (REE). For this Special Issue, we invite researchers to submit manuscripts addressing questions related to the sustainability, vulnerability, and resilience of WEEE management systems, in particular: Which requirements do WEEE management systems have to fulfill to be awarded the attribute "sustainable"? What are the factors determining the vulnerability of such systems (e.g., changes in the "feedstock", fluctuations of commodity prices, decreasing demand for secondary products, such as cathode ray tube (CRT) glass, socio-cultural issues)? How vulnerable are existing WEEE management systems against such factors? How can their resilience be improved (e.g., improved product design, better integration of actors along the product and recycling chain, certification of secondary raw materials)?
Patrick A. Wäger
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- disposal
- recovery
- resilience
- sustainability
- vulnerability
- waste management
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