Abstract
Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) has brought negative effects to the environment produced by the materials that compose them. The proper implementation of management plans of WEEE should integrate measures to prevent, mitigate and correct these affectations. As an initial step, it is necessary to make a diagnosis of the current situation of WEEE management which is the objective of this work. The studied zone was composed by the municipalities of Tampico, Ciudad Madero and Altamira located in southeast Tamaulipas, Mexico. The descriptive analysis of technical and regulatory aspects of the current management system in the study area was developed, including generation rates and analysis of waste streams. Among the main results, the generation of WEEE was estimated in 2040.38 tons/year for 2013, distributed in the municipalities of Tampico with 830.93 tons/year, Altamira with 650.18 tons/year, and Ciudad Madero with 559.27 tons/year. This calculation was estimated using Mexico’s WEEE generation indicators. The analysis of waste streams includes five categories of WEEE, Televisions with 61% of the total generation, followed by sound devices with 18%, personal computers with 17%; mobile phones with 2% as well as fixed phones with 1%. In the study area, reports of Tampico’s municipality indicated that 96 tons of WEEE was collected in the city of Tampico in 2013. In Mexico, the national legislation considers WEEE in the category of waste requiring special handling (WRSH), however, it exists an inadequacy in the environmental laws about the specific classification of this kind of debris that makes their effective management more difficult. No companies who provide a management or treatment operations for WEEE are reported in Tampico, or in the near region. In addition, despite an initial interest for the municipality to attend the WEEE problematic, it exists a lack of sensibility of the population in the absence of environmental education programs.
Highlights
Electric and Electronic Equipment (EEE) who have reached the end of its useful life are known as Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)
It can be appreciated that Tampico and Altamira are the municipalities who have a greater tendency to generate WEEE than Madero City, because they have a mayor population projection than Madero City
In Mexico the first diagnosis of WEEE generation was conducted in 2007, reporting a generation of 300,000 tons of WEEE in selected states of Mexican Republic located on the northern border of the country, as Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Tamaulipas
Summary
Electric and Electronic Equipment (EEE) who have reached the end of its useful life are known as Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). Basel Convention and Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants have unified criteria in the cross-border flow of toxic substances that integrate WEEE [12]-[14] This situation has led to the development of environmental policies for proper management of WEEE, with criteria of mitigation and prevention in countries such as Switzerland, countries members of the EEC, Japan, among others [15]. The current management actions of WEEE are described in urban areas of southeast of Tamaulipas, Mexico with the aim of obtaining the basis for the development of a management plan integrating technical, economic, regulatory, social and institutional characteristics in the municipalities of Tampico, Madero City and Altamira, Tamaulipas, Mexico
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