Transboundary Movements of Used and Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment
Time：2016-12-31 16:18
European Union (EU-28) exports of second-hand, or waste refrigerators, freezers, laptops, desktop computers, televisions and monitors and flat panel displays were analyzed using trade statistics from the EU COMEXT database. Based on the findings of this analysis, the amount of exported of used electronic and electric equipment (EEE) and/or the waste thereof (e-waste) from the investigated products doubled from 5kt in 2008 to 10kt in 2013. The exports were mostly comprised of desktops, followed by refrigerators and flat panel displays.
The methodology was based on price discrimination of average price of the commodity flows. It can only trace whole units–not scrapped products. The analyzed data contained many flawed records, and due to the level of aggregation, it reflected a mix of prices. Consequently, the average prices is mainly determined by the new units in the mix; there would have to be an enormous quantity of low price exports to pull the average price down to what would be considered a reasonable price for a used good. Besides this, intentionally incorrectly reported data of e‐waste, such as illegal exports, are not covered by this research, either. Therefore, the total quantity of exports is clearly an underestimate of the true total.
Despite this, the destinations from the analysis probably reflect the actual trading routes of used EEE or e-waste. As a general trend, the trade of all appliances increased from to 2008 to 2013. The fastest growth was observed in exports to Northern Africa and Western Africa, Southern Asia and Central Asia.
Citation: Baldé, C.P., Wang, F., Kuehr, R., (2016), Transboundary movements of used and waste electronic and electrical equipment, United Nations University, Vice Rectorate in Europe – Sustainable Cycles Programme (SCYCLE), Bonn, Germany.