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Article Excerpt
Most countries place great importance on the recycling, treatment, and reuse of household electronic waste (hereinafter referred to as HEW). For instance, countries in Europe began to treat electronic waste as early as the 1970s. Since the beginning of the 1980s, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden have probed deeply into the comprehensive utilization of electronic waste, and have devoted considerable efforts to the technical development of manual disassembly and metal enrichment. In the 1990s, the mechanical technique of metal enrichment was furthered and implemented in Western Europe (Wu 2001). Meanwhile, related legal regulations were enacted by European countries, including The Law on Recycling of Electronic Waste, The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (hereinafter referred to as WEEE), and The Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (hereinafter referred to as RoHS Directive) (Wang 2002; Zhou 2006). As a key link in the European environmental protection system, the principle of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is to extend the producer's responsibility for environmental protection not only to the production process, but also to the whole product lifecycle, especially the recycling and treatment of waste. Generally, EPR consists of economic, recycling, and informative responsibilities (Feng 2005).
With great focus on development of cleaner production processes, the United States, as well, has striven to reduce electronic waste in the production process. However, as opposed to the recycling efforts in Europe, the U.S. has preferred burning and burying for the treatment of hazardous waste (Wu 2001).The U.S. encourages and backs a "voluntary partnership program" to solve environmental problems. Various groups may participate in this program, including companies of all sizes, state or local governments, universities, or community organizations. For example, Sony launched a five-year plan in Minnesota for the recycling of all its electronic products; IBM carried out the project of "Renewable IBM PC"; and HP established a product recycling solution plant in Roseville, California.
Finally, Japan as well has placed great emphasis on conservation and reuse of energy sources and resources (Wu 2001). Since the early 21st century, Japan began to enhance research on effective ways of electronic waste disposal. It has promulgated The Basic Law for Establishing a Recycling-based Society, and formulated a series of supporting laws and regulations, including The Waste Disposal Law, The Law for the Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources, and The Electric Household Appliance Recycling Law (Gu 2007).
China is the largest producer and consumer of household appliances in the world. However, the technology for the reuse and disposal of waste household appliances has not yet been well developed. Most of such recycling processes are manually operated, with low processing and utilization ratios (Wen 2004). In addition, burying, direct burning, and acid treatment are still used as main disposal methods, all of which have caused serious pollution and waste of resources. In consideration of all these factors, the Chinese government has set about formulating relevant policies to facilitate the recycling of...
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