10 07 29 Master thesis Juliana Leon - e-Waste. This guide

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iggest formal e-waste recycling companies) in a temporary take-back campaign supported by the MAVDT. In addition to donations to CPE and temporary take-back campaigns, households and MSEs use three more exit channels to discard their obsolete PCs. First, they give it to a reciclador; second, they leave it at an informal or semi-formal computer shop in exchange for money or a discount on their next purchase; and third, they dispose off with normal solid waste. From this last alternative, one part ends up in hands of recicladores and another part is collected by the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) truck. 3.2.4.2 Category 2: Medium and Large Business (MLBs) Big companies with an environmental consciousness are donating their computers to CPE or paying specialized companies for the environmental sound treatment of their ICT equipments. In 2009, MLBs gave close to 406 tons to CPE, the major donators being companies from the banking sector (Camacho, 2010). Other companies that do not want to pay for the treatment mostly organize auctions or just sell off packages of IT material to intermediaries. Other possible outputs for this category (i.e. recicladores, MSW collection) were neglected. 3.2.4.3 Category 3: Government and Education By law, public institutions cannot give their goods to private companies or persons; this is why they are giving their obsolete computers either to the CPE program (as a donation to another public institution) or organizing public auctions. Due to this shortage of possibilities, some public universities have huge stocks of obsolete computers awaiting a solution (Uribe et al., 2010). In this category, private educational institutions (i.e. private universities and schools) are also included. They are mainly giving their equipments to CPE or selling off packages of IT material to intermediaries. As in the MFA, public auctions and intermediaries are grouped in the same process box, the flow of computers that exits from users category “Government and Education” and goes to “Auctions/Middlemen” process is set as the total generation of this category minus the donations to CPE. 24
3.3 Operation of the informal sector in Colombian main cities In Colombia, there is no specific law that regulates e-waste recycling yet. The lack of control and regulation combined with high unemployment rates and poverty in the country has led some groups of people to find an economic benefit by doing collection, disassembly, sorting, and trade of valuable parts of waste electronic equipments. These processes are carried out with unprofessional methods while simply dumping the often-hazardous non-profitable components. For the representation in the MFA, activities performed by the IS concerning e-waste management can be simplified into four processes: informal collection, informal disassembly, informal refurbishment, and informal metal extraction. The same person can perform two or more processes and almost all stakeholders realize additionally storing, buying, and selling. Although these processes are informal, all except metal extraction have also positive impacts: they contribute to employment and income generation, stimulate the repair-and-refurbish industry, increase the lifespan of disposal sites and promote sustainable resource use. Based on the field observations, relevant activities performed under the four mentioned processes are explained below. 3.3.1 Informal collection Informal collection is in most cases performed by recicladores who also gather other recyclable materials (paper, glass, plastics, etc.) and useful devices. The informal waste harvesting currently practiced in Colombia includes activities such as door-todoor collection, retrieval of waste from public places, dumpsite recovery and waste exchange involving households, middlemen, recicladores, traders, and wholesalers. Through door-to-door collection, the recicladores collect materials such as paper, glass and plastics directly from households or businesses, generally “as a donation”. Street waste picking consists of the recovery of materials or commodities from mixed waste thrown on the streets or from communal bins. In the case of computers, the possibility that a device found in the street is broken or incomplete is quite high. In 25
Page 3 and 4: Abstract In Colombia, as in other d
Page 5 and 6: Glossary Chatarrerías - A term use
Page 7 and 8: 3.3.2 Informal refurbishment and r
Page 9: List of Tables Table 1: General inf
Page 12 and 13: 1.2 Colombia as case study The Repu
Page 14 and 15: (both laptop and desktop) in Colomb
Page 16 and 17: collection, refurbishment, manual d
Page 18 and 19: 2 METHODS 2.1 Computer waste genera
Page 20 and 21: Table 4: Parameters used for the co
Page 22 and 23: made. This means that from the tota
Page 24 and 25: 2.3.1 Definitions The following imp
Page 26 and 27: Table 7: Average composition and we
Page 28 and 29: M c ik = ˙ ik ˙ (9) F i The distr
Page 30 and 31: In 2009, waste of more recent techn
Page 32 and 33: 200 and 350 tons. Based on the latt
Page 36 and 37: this study, the term “informal co
Page 38 and 39: A pilot project conducted in Bogot
Page 40 and 41: Figure 12: Manual dismantling of co
Page 42 and 43: city. Scrap metal dealers are then
Page 44 and 45: The direct MSW collection rate is t
Page 46 and 47: In the three scenarios, informally
Page 48 and 49: are mixed with common glass, or are
Page 50 and 51: entering the market are almost excl
Page 52 and 53: Non treated (low-grade PWBs) Formal
Page 54 and 55: Refurbish Formal treatment Worst ca
Page 56 and 57: introduction of an Advanced Recycli
Page 58 and 59: Table 15: Theoretical benefit from
Page 60 and 61: 3.5.1.3 Social benefits Allowing th
Page 62 and 63: 3.5.2.2 Environmental benefits Evid
Page 64 and 65: 4 FINAL REMARKS 4.1 Computer waste
Page 66 and 67: possible intervention points. There
Page 68 and 69: small metal parts that can be sold,
Page 70 and 71: 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to
Page 72 and 73: Gmünder S. (2007). Recycling - Fro
Page 74 and 75: Uribe L.M., Wolfensberger M. y Ott,
Page 76 and 77: Appendix A.2: List of expert interv
Page 78 and 79: Appendix B.1: Flow scheme for the
Page 80 and 81: Appendix C.2: Flow Matrix for the

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