Analysis of Habits of Consumers Related to e-Waste Considering the Knowledge of Brazilian National Policy of Solid Waste: A Comparison among White, Green, Brown and Blue Lines

Abstract

Background: The increase in waste generation, caused by technological innovation and planned obsolescence has demanded strategies such as reverse logistics to mitigate the negative impacts on the environment. Objective: This paper analyzes the differences in the consumer’s habits of the four lines of electrical and electronics, and the alterations in these habits considering the knowledge of legislation related to waste management. Methods: We conducted applied, exploratory, descriptive, and quantitative research. We performed a survey with Brazilian consumers of electrical and electronics equipment, through a questionnaire. To analyze data, we performed a logistic regression. Results: As the main results, we can highlight the probabilities of habits by line and the knowledge of legislation by habits, and confirm our study’s two hypotheses. The first was related to the analysis of whether specific consumer habits tend to relate to particular lines of equipment and the second analyzes whether these habits tend to relate to knowledge of the legislation. Conclusion: We found that, depending on the type of e-waste, the participants of our study have different habits related to disposal and reverse logistics, and those with knowledge of the BPSW tend to have appropriate habits related to discard and reverse logistics. This paper can be helpful because it discusses the existing differences in the habits of the participants considering the lines and knowledge of legislation.