SUbstance flow analysis of the recycling of small waste electrical ...

7. Recommendations 117
In many cases, WEEE is dismantled manually in the informal sector, which achieves high
recovery rates for precious metals, and employs many people who need an employment.
These accomplishments as well as the high reuse rates should not hide the negative effects
of the informal activities related to the recovery of metals on the environment, as presented
in chapter 2.4.3. As emphasized by Manomaivibool (2009), strategies to solve the problems
cannot be developed “without a solid understanding of the context” and an improvement of
“our knowledge on physical and economic flows in the target market”. Instead of making
policies to suppress the informal sector, it could be more effective to integrate it into the
process chain and help it to reduce the environmental impacts to an acceptable level. The
advantages of combining the potentials of the manual dismantling and of reuse in
developing countries with the technologies used in Europe and North America to recover the
(precious) metals are mentioned by the description of the project “Best of two worlds” of the
StEP initiative (StEP 2009) and by the research of Kahhat & Williams (2009). However, since
the informal sector is not yet ready to treat WEEE in an environmentally sound manner and,
anyway, since it has to deal with the increasing generation of domestic WEEE in developing
countries, the export of WEEE should be effectively prevented, in accordance with the
legislation.
7.2. Other strategies to limit the discard of precious metals
Because solutions of problems within a system can also be found outside this system, two
further strategies are recommended to improve the cycles of precious metals associated with
WEEE. They concern the design of EEE for reuse and recycling and the limitation of the
generation of WEEE.
7.2.1. Design EEE for reuse and treatment
The design of the product essentially determines the materials used in the product, the
material combinations and the type of connections (screws, glue etc.). For this reason, the
design of electrical and electronic equipment considerably influences the efficiency of the
end-of-life process (pre-processing and recovery process). Design-for-Recycling aims at
increasing both the quality of the recyclates and the recovery rates (Reuter and Van Schaik
2008). Various research groups developed concepts related to design for end-of-life, like
Dietrich et al. (2000), Krause et al. (2006), Huisman (2003), Mathieux (2008), Meskers
(2008), Reuter et al. (2005), Rifer et al. (2009), Stevels (2007) and Unger et al. (2008), as
well as the project ‘DfR case studies library’ (StEP 2009).