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Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) principles have emerged as the template for e-waste policies, centered on establishing regulated collection and recycling channels. Originating in the global North, these policies are increasingly adopted in the global South where e-waste is primarily 'managed' by the informal sector, centered in spatially defined hubs. These formal systems fail to achieve collection quotas, while further marginalizing informal recyclers by delegitimizing their access to e-waste. We suggest an alternative hub-centered approach to e-waste reform based on eight years of research and advocacy within the Israel-West Bank e-waste system. We offer several converging rationales for centralizing hubs in e-waste policies and a case study demonstrating an integrated hub-driven package of business, enforcement, and cleanup measures. While the unique complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian case offer an exceptional window into the dynamics of a hub-driven approach, similar packages might shape e-waste policy reform throughout the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Initial, and still dominant, explanations of transboundary e-waste flows have relied on the Pollution Haven Hypothesis (PHH), which theorizes that pollution intensive economic activities will relocate to jurisdictions with the most relaxed environmental regulations. This hypothesis has influenced the parameters of the BAN Amendment to the Basel Convention, which uniformly restricts the movement of hazardous waste (including e-waste) from the global North-to-South. Recent research, however, has shown that e-waste does not simply flow to less regulated areas with cheaper labor: for example, flows are not simply from North-to-South, and e-waste processing areas are only in a subset of developing countries and very specific regions within these. Specifically, e-waste processing tends to be done very largely within "hubs," regional concentrations of firms and organizations, which, though overwhelmingly informal, exhibit many of the characteristics of other kinds of industrial clusters. Thus, a more nuanced theory of e-waste destinations is overdue, promising greater explanatory power as well as more granular and effective policy stances and tools. This paper contributes to these goals by synthesizing indications from the literature on e-waste hubs in Africa and Asia of recurring factors shaping their emergence, and further elaborating these on the basis of our own extensive field research in two very different informal e-waste hubs in Palestine and Ghana. This analysis offers an initial theory of place-specific characteristics and circumstances that attract and facilitate the emergence and agglomeration of such industries. Our findings thus allow us to move beyond the PHH first pass macro conceptualizations to more nuanced and dynamic accounts of e-waste destinations at a regional and even micro-level, as well to challenge and improve upon the policies derived from the PHH framing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various forms of informal activity have long played an under-recognized yet substantial role in solid waste management, especially in developing countries. In particular, informal activity is prominent in the electronic waste (e-waste) sector, whose volume and impacts have grown rapidly over recent decades. While the worrying aspects of informal e-waste recycling have been widely discussed, less attention has been given to its positive potential and to its relation to formal e-waste actors and policies. These topics have direct implication for pathways for transitioning from informality, and, in particular, ways in which informal recyclers can build on their strengths while beginning to operate in cleaner ways that retain livelihoods while reducing ill effects. In this paper, we draw upon extensive field work as well as secondary literatures to offer a taxonomy of management stances towards informal e-waste practices. These range from hostility through disconnection to interaction and, finally, synergy. Our recommendation is for the latter since the informal sector has important strengths and merits, as well as its harmful aspects, while formal approaches that ignore or attempt to squelch the informal sector do not yield constructive outcomes. Specifically, we suggest an incremental ratcheting synergistic model that draws on the respective strengths of both sectors to forge a genuine partnership between them. We describe six key elements of this model, and illustrate it through application to the Israeli–Palestinian context we have studied in depth. In particular, we show how the treatment of copper cables, now one of this industry's largest and most harmful segments, can be improved through an incremental series of synergetic solutions that preserve or even improve livelihoods of informal recyclers while greatly reducing their health and environmental impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]