Page 101 - Implementation of ITU-T international standards for sustainable management of waste electrical and electronic equipment: The path to a circular economy in Costa Rica

Implementation of ITU-T international standards for sustainable management of waste
electrical and electronic equipment: The path to a circular economy in Costa Rica

• Requiring EPR compliance to importers.
• Educating consumers on proper WEEE management.

• Internalizing the costs of WEEE integral and sustainable management. Currently, they
face the challenge of a low-price market due to pressure from CUs and intermediaries.

– Need to develop or increase fractions recycling capacity, for which there is not yet a
national value chain. They point out that to export certain fractions they need minimum
volumes, otherwise management is very costly.
– Difficulty in managing hazardous fractions abroad, due to export requirements, which
make it tough.
– Access to technologies for processing materials, which currently are imported, by the
country

5 WEEE management system: challenges, opportunities, and
lessons learned

Costa Rica has made progress in consolidating a WEEE-sustainable management system
based on a waste hierarchy, which allows the implementation of circular economy models in
the WEEE sector. The country has developed a set of comprehensive regulations as system
foundations, including Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). The implementation of ITU-T
Recommendations has allowed challenges and opportunities to be identified that can help
the country to improve the system in order to meet the targets and achievements proposed in
national policies, plans, strategies, and related international objectives.

The implementation experience created lessons to be learned that may be useful to other
countries or cities that need to develop their national WEEE systems. Opportunities to
improve Recommendations ITU-T L.1031 and ITU-T L.1032 were also identified based on the
implementation experience in Costa Rica. The following sections address each of these aspects.

5.1 Challenges faced by Costa Rica to strengthen the National System
for E-waste Management (SINAGIRE)

Digital transformation and the rapid ICT progress are advantages for countries and challenges
for national WEEE management systems.

In the case of Costa Rica, 2020–2030, projections shown in Figure 52 reflect that laptop and
cell phone waste generation tends to increase rapidly along the decade. These WEEE currently
have low management rates, which makes it necessary to prioritize measures to ensure their
proper management due to their environmental relevance.

In Costa Rica, REP only applies to importers that trade EEE; however, as the study has shown,
there are other importers such as natural persons, the public sector, and the private sector that
bring EEE into the national stream. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen SINAGIRE by creating
a mechanism whereby companies and institutions that import EEE for their consumption properly
manage the WEEE they generate. Waste management plans by generators must include WEEE;
however, monitoring and control of these plans by the Ministry of Health is limited.

Countries may have management systems with logistical and technical capacities to tackle
national WEEE generation; however, consumers, either natural or legal persons, are the

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