End of life treatment costs for a computer in Costa Rica

Abstract

In Costa Rica, the lack of concrete solutions for electronic waste led a group of stakeholders
to request bilateral aid from the Dutch Sustainable Development Agreements programme to
address this problem in a systematic way. Since 2002, this group of stakeholders has formed a
technical committee and engaged key national ministries, and the private sector, in a process
to arrive at a sustainable, reliable, and responsible strategy for management of wastes,
supported by a Dutch NGO, WASTE.
"National Strategy for an integrated and sustainable management of wastes from electronic
and electric equipment in Costa Rica" is the result of six years of policy development and
practical experimentation. The management approach includes:
1. Analysis of technical aspects for the waste collection, dismantling, storage, transport
and treatment
2. An institutional approach is based on a participatory planning and decision-making
process which has involved all stakeholders.
3. Development and negotiation of the National Decree for a National System for the
Management of Special Wastes has been on the agenda of the project. Both the
failures and the successes in relation to the decree offer many lessons for other
countries and regional governments.
4. The programme has invited the participation of citizens and businesses, in designing
the opportunities for the responsible disposal of electronic wastes from the social
perspective.
5. The project has a point of departure based on extended producer responsibility (EPR)
translated and adapted to the Costa Rican context, meaning that some or all of the
waste management costs must be included in the price of the product. To our
knowledge, this is the first example of an EPR approach to WEEE in a South country,
supported by a development co-operation project.
This paper is a practical work on a technical problem in which a different type of international
cooperation was applied in order to find solutions for the problem presented.