Work Team E-48: E-waste management

Work Group description

The development of the CyberSociety and its intensive use of technology is also associated with a huge production of electronic equipment: from personal computers and mobile phones to the major datacenters which constitute the complex physical network of Internet, production and consumption of eletronic devices play a central role in the economy of the Information Society.

E-waste is the general label given to all kinds of waste generated from electrical and electronic equipment. With the exponential rise in the production and consumption of such devices, the amount of e-waste generated each year has become an issue which also grows bigger with the rapid spread of the use technology in the different aspects of our everyday life.

There are different issues which call for attention regarding e-waste management, along all stages of the electronic devices' production cycle, from design and development, through consumption and use, up to recycling and disposal. Regarding the topic of consumption, for example, a point to be explored is the concept of "obsolescence" and the roles of mass media and the industry of electronics in the construction of consumers' "need" to constantly change their laptops, mobiles, cameras and other equipments. Another issue is how to properly dispose e-waste, since it can not be discarded alongside household garbage because of the large amount of toxic substances present in these devices which can severely pollute the environment. Also, electronic products contain huge amounts of applied knowledge, and to simply throw them away is a loss of all this knowledge.

Furthermore, one of the still unresolved problems related to the egalitarian dissemination of access to computers and the Internet among disadvantaged groups, specially in developing countries, is the impossibility of many people and associations to afford the prices of the devices. The high cost of some of the equipment, services and appliances is still a key factor for the existence of the "digital divide" which could also be addressed by the use of supposedly obsolete technologies.

Thus it is clear that the issue of what to do with e-waste touches many issues that need to be discussed and disseminated, from a technical point of view of how to make the process more sustainable and cause as less impact as possible to the environment, to the different strategies of appropriation, re-signification and reuse of e-waste.

In this context, our proposal for this working group is to discuss the different issues related to electronic waste, through reflection on data and case studies about how communities, NGOs, companies and governments are dealing with the problem, the different strategies and public policies on the issue, and possible environmental and social solutions.

We encourage communications in video format (surveys, documentaries etc) and text (articles, reports etc). We also plan to organize remote round-tables using video-conference technology. If you are interested in participating, please contact the coordinators of the WG.

The coordinators of this WG are part of the projects obsoletos.org from Spain, lixoeletronico.org from Brazil and the MetaReciclagem network http://rede.metareciclagem.org