A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF WEEE MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES IN INDIA

Abstract

Globally, increasing population, advanced industrialization and developing economies contribute to the rapid increase in waste, thereby amplifying the complexity and hazardous nature of waste. Developing nation has successfully gleaned the financial development, the production and consumption of its population extremely harms the standard of ecosystems and the respectability of its regular assets. With exponential expansion in electronic and electrical manufacturing sector, the waste and pollution generated due to this expansion have also increased rapidly causing deterioration of the environment. Compelled by deteriorating environmental condition due to rapid industrialization and market pressures, environmentalists, industrialists as well as academicians are concerned about incorporating environmentally sound waste management practices into the reverse and forward supply chain activities. Further, formal recycling sector being the backbone of any economy is the major contributor in terms of resource and energy recovery and also contribute significantly towards the environmental degradation. But existence of large informal recycling network can create negative impact on the environment because of their primitive approach towards WEEE treatment and recycling procedures. Consequently, to address the rising environmental concern, government and other stakeholders need to come up with stringent framework which helps to reduce environmental degradation. Thus keeping this in mind this study aims to analyze and develop a framework for WEEE management adoption and implementation issues in Indian context This research work has four objectives and the whole thesis is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter is an introduction and presents the basic background and the need for the study. It highlights the importance of WEEE management in environmental as well as economic growth of the country. The second chapter deals with literature review and it provides an in-depth and exhaustive review of the literature on WEEE management. Detailed definitions of WEEE and various classification of WEEE are also discussed. An extensive review of the literature on enablers and barriers to WEEE management implementation/adoption is also presented in this chapter. Third chapter presents the research approach followed. It discusses about various methodologies adopted and their brief description. Fourth chapter deals with the development of a framework to identify barriers of WEEE management adoption and also determine the interrelationship among the barriers to WEEE management implementation. A total of seven II main category barriers and forty-four sub category barriers are identified. Policy and regulatory barriers emerged as the most important barriers followed with technological barriers and socioeconomic barriers. Fifth chapter deals with identifying enablers of sustainable WEEE management and selection of WEEE recycling partner based on green competencies. Forty-seven enablers are identified and recycling partners’ selection using case of five recycling firms is done on the basis of these enablers. Resource and environmental capabilities and green core competencies found to be the most important enablers for the selection of WEEE recycling partner. Sixth chapter deals with the framework for identification and finalization and selection criteria by considering social, economic, environmental, technical and political aspects. A total of twenty nine criteria are categorized into five main dimensions for the selection of best and sustainable location for WEEE recycling plant. The results have indicated that environmental and natural criteria is the key criteria for the selection of sustainable location for WEEE recycling plant. Policy and legal criteria and economic criteria have occupied the second and third positions respectively. This framework can act as a benchmark for the selection of optimal location for siting WEEE recycling plant facilities.