In Costa Rica, the lack of concrete solutions for electronic waste led a group of stakeholdersto request bilateral aid from the Dutch Sustainable Development Agreements programme toaddress this problem in a systematic way. Since 2002, this group of stakeholders has formed atechnical committee and engaged key national ministries, and the private sector, in a processto arrive at a sustainable, reliable, and responsible strategy for management of wastes,supported by a Dutch NGO, WASTE."National Strategy for an integrated and sustainable management of wastes from electronicand electric equipment in Costa Rica" is the result of six years of policy development andpractical experimentation. The management approach includes:1. Analysis of technical aspects for the waste collection, dismantling, storage, transportand treatment2. An institutional approach is based on a participatory planning and decision-makingprocess which has involved all stakeholders.3. Development and negotiation of the National Decree for a National System for theManagement of Special Wastes has been on the agenda of the project. Both thefailures and the successes in relation to the decree offer many lessons for othercountries and regional governments.4. The programme has invited the participation of citizens and businesses, in designingthe opportunities for the responsible disposal of electronic wastes from the socialperspective.5. The project has a point of departure based on extended producer responsibility (EPR)translated and adapted to the Costa Rican context, meaning that some or all of thewaste management costs must be included in the price of the product. To ourknowledge, this is the first example of an EPR approach to WEEE in a South country,supported by a development co-operation project.This paper is a practical work on a technical problem in which a different type of internationalcooperation was applied in order to find solutions for the problem presented.

The construction industry deals with the provision of shelter and infrastructure for acontinuing growing population and urbanization, especially in developing countries, Thissector is well known as a huge consumer of natural resources; which produces a significantquantity of construction and demolition waste, Data about the situation of construction wastegeneration in Costa Rica is scarce and the objectives of the study were to develop a baselinestudy to determine quantities and composition of the waste, as well as, motivators and barriersfor achieving a more sustainable activity, This paper draws the findings of the surveyundertaken by means of questionnaires, interviews and site visits, The composition basicallyis wood, soil, piping materials, corrugated roof sheets, wires, packaging materials (paper,plastic and cardboard), cement, concrete, blocks, paints and debris, The amounts (either byvolume or by weight) of these streams are unknown since the majority of the companies don'tkeep track of these data, It is suggested a value of I 00 kg/m2 as an educated guess of theamount of construction waste produced, This high amount, compared to lower values found inliterature for developed countries, could be explained by the general lack of awareness andinformation on environmental issues as well as lack of technologies, governmentalenforcement and market incentives to improve the environmental footprint of the sector,