Management of waste electrical and electronic equipment in Romania: A mini-review

Abstract

Around the world there are growing concerns for waste electrical and electronic equipment. This is motivated by the harmful effects of waste electrical and electronic equipment on the environment, but also by the perspectives of materials recovery. Differences between countries regarding waste electrical and electronic equipment management are notable in the European Union. Romania is among the countries that have made significant efforts to comply with European Union regulations, but failed reaching the collection target. The article presents a mini review of the waste electrical and electronic equipment management system in Romania, based on legislation and policy documents, statistical data, research studies and reports published by national and international organisations. The article debates subjects like legislative framework, the electrical and electronic equipment Romanian market, the waste electrical and electronic equipment collection system, waste electrical and electronic equipment processing and waste electrical and electronic equipment behaviour. The recast of the European directive brings new challenges to national authorities and to other stakeholders involved in the waste electrical and electronic equipment management. Considering the fact that Romania has managed a collection rate of roughly 1 kg capita(-1) in the last years, the new higher collection targets established by the waste electrical and electronic equipment Directive offer a serious challenge for the management system. Therefore, another aim of the article is to highlight the positive and negative aspects in the Romanian waste electrical and electronic equipment field, in order to identify the flows that should be corrected and the opportunities that could help improve this system to the point of meeting the European standards imposed by the European Directive.

Waste of electrical and electronic equipment: Trends and awareness among youths in Lithuania

“…Some earlier research on the Lithuanian WEEE system (Gurauskienė and Stasiškienė, 2011) also indicated that 28% of consumers store obsolete EEE, the storing period accounting for 10 years on average. In Romania, also a new EU member, some similar trends are observed − 33% of households possess some non-functioning EEE (Ciocoiu et al, 2016). Survey results regarding different handling approaches depending on the size are much in line with other studies.…”

“…A lack of collection points as an obstacle of proper WEEE recycling was also acknowledged by Botelho et al (2016) with some 60% of respondents in the case of Portugal. Therefore, according to some authors, promotion of the take-back programmes (Ciocoiu et al, 2016) or/and expansion of take-back channel variety and improvement of the existing ones (Friege et al, 2015) could be the options to increase WEEE collection rates.…”

Electronic waste management in Romania: pathways for sustainable practices

“…There are over 2,000 collection points in commercial networks in Romania, with adequate infrastructure for weekly or monthly collection (Pacesila et al, 2016). However, the necessary of municipal ewaste collection points are less than the number of authorized collectors in most of the Romanian counties (Ciocoiu et al, 2016).…”

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment: A Review on the Identification Methods for Polymeric Materials

“…The Directive 2012/19/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on WEEE [132] adapted for Romania requires a WEEE collection of minimum of 40% of the existing market amount until 2020 and 85% of the generated waste by 2021. Still, the waste recycling management strategy is progressing slowly due to the lack of proper infrastructure for WEEE recycling with a low number of collection centers and only few national programs for waste recycling, and population ignorance regarding the negative effects on the environment [133][134][135].…”