E-waste management facing the Sustainable Development Goals: the London, Accra and Sao Paulo case studies

Abstract

The significant increase in the production of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) - commonly known as e-waste - in recent years has raised many concerns among scientists due to the risks that inappropriate management and its negative effective on human health and the environment, mostly in urban areas. At the same time, the recycling of WEEE represents a strong possibility of implementing reverse logistics and circular economy. The present project aims to analyze and compare three e-waste management systems in distinct urban agglomerations - London Larger Urban Zone (UK), Great Accra Region (Ghana) and Paulista Macrometropolis (Brazil) - in order to assess to what extent they are moving towards the Sustainable Development Goals (more specifically, goals 3, 6, 8, 11, 12 and 14) established by the UN 2030 Agenda. From that basis, it will be possible to raise the challenges presented by these case studies - given the national / regional contexts in which they are embedded - and to point out which legal or technical instruments have been successful and which, if endowed with universality, could be transferred to other urban realities. With this research project, it is also expected to deepen the scientific investigations of the FAPESP Project The environmental and economic impacts of the processing of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) in the global urban south (2017 / 22067-0) and of the FAPESP Thematic Project Environmental Governance of the Paulista Macrometropolis facing climatic variability (2015/03804-9), especially regarding the debate on environmental governance and sanitation in the urban space.