Worldwide E-waste Management Models: Delving into Pros and Cons and the Way Forward

The definition of electronic waste, also known as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), keeps evolving. However, traditionally it is compartmentalized as monitors, printers, tablets, computers, servers, and cell phones. Nowadays, the term e-waste encompasses almost every business and household electronic product or device that uses some sort of power or battery supply. Eventually, when this electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) reaches its end-of-life (EOL) or its useful life it becomes electronic waste or WEEE, which these days is known as e-waste (Read 2021). Therefore, the most generic and simplistic way to define e-waste would be the definition agreed upon by StEP (Solving the E-waste Problem): E-waste is a term used to cover items of all types of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and its parts that have been discarded by the owner as waste without the intention of reuse. Interestingly enough, e-waste may account for 3% (at the most) of household solid waste, but it is considered one of the most unsafe types of waste to manage (Kumar et al. 2017). For instance, around 70% of cadmium and mercury that are found in the landfills of the USA comes from electronic waste streams (Tanskanen 2013). Annually, approximately 50 million tons of global WEEE end up in the environment (UN 2009), while the volume grows by 3–5% per year (Yu et al. 2010). Around 80% of e-waste is not even documented. Meanwhile, the developing nations turn out to be among the biggest contributors to the WEEE due to their prevalent informal system. The deficiencies of their current laws and policies on the management of WEEE have let the informal recycling sector develop (Borthakur and Govind 2017), where the most valuable materials are extracted. In the meantime, the rest of the hazardous elements are tossed away into the environment, bringing harm to human health and obviously the environment (Baldе et al. 2017). Thus, these mentioned deficiencies in WEEE treatment ultimately contribute to the expansion of informal e-waste sectors in the countries of Asia, South America, Oceania, and many other African and poor countries. Furthermore, even with the presence of a formal electronic waste collection/recycling/ management system in place, the informal system could still be operational and significant (Shevchenko et al. 2021).