The European Union (EU) has legislated Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) management since 2002, in the Directive 2002/96/EC and Directive 2012/19/EU (the WEEE Directives).
A new publication, prepared in partnership between UNITAR and the WEEE Forum and its members, provides key statistics of WEEE flows, collection rates in the EU-27, Norway, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Iceland from 2010 to 2021 by integrating several data sources.
This is an update of the timeseries of the previous study “In-depth Review of the WEEE Collection Rates and Targets in the EU-28, Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland” by UNITAR. Data on Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) Placed on Market (POM) and WEEE collection managed by formal collection system Figures up to 2019 are based on the data collected within the framework of the WEEE Directives.
For the years 2020 and 2021, EEE POM and WEEE collection data are based on the WEEE Forum Key Figures database. The WEEE flows that are not managed and documented by the formal WEEE management systems have been researched and estimated, thereby updating the previous UNITAR work as supplemented with recent studies.
Finally, the study includes statistics on household stocks that are based on detailed data from internal datasets of UNITAR combined with six nationally representative surveys coordinated by producer responsibility organisations (PROs) of the WEEE Forum among 8,775 households in total.
The study reveals that the amount of EEE POM in the 27 Member States of the EU, Norway, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Iceland increased from 9.8 million metric tonnes (Mt), in 2010 to 13.3 Mt in 2019 (25.2 kg/inhabitant). The WEEE generated also shows an increase of 2.1 Mt, from 8.3 Mt in 2010 to 10.4 Mt (19.6 kg/inhabitant) in 2021.
The documented formal collection of WEEE shows an increase of 1.8 Mt, from 3.8 Mt in 2010 to 5.6 Mt (10.5 kg/inhabitant) in 2021.
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