Circular Economy and Recycling of Electronic Products in the European Union

Abstract

Abstract The plan proposed within the 2030 Agenda through its specific objectives regarding sustainable development as well as through the approach to achieving a circular economy, is part of a strategy at European level for improving and preserving the environment in a sustainable manner. The recycling process as a component of the strategy has and will have a major impact on the environment. In this article, a data mining analysis is carried out regarding the recycling rate of electronic and electrical products at the European level. The analysis is carried out for two moments of time, namely the year 2018 and the year 2021. Following the clustering process of the countries from the European Union (EU), it is easier to see which countries have similar behavior from this point of view. At the same time, taking into account the two years, it is possible to observe the dynamics of the created clusters and how the European countries succeed to manage the recycling process of electronic and electrical products three years apart. The two moments were chosen taking into account the COVID-19 pandemic, the period in which, the teleworking way has occurred. For this reason, many employees had to purchase the necessary things and transform at least one room into an office. The authors’ contributions consisted in the pre-processing of data sets, the application of data mining algorithms, obtaining the results and their interpretation in the given context, commenting on the results obtained and providing answers to the research questions. The work is structured in five sections, respectively Introduction, Literature review, Methodology, Results and Discussion and Conclusion.