Page 96 - 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

Eighty per cent of the managers do not separate the so-called critical or scarce elements and
one of them points out that it performs another type of management, which is neither national
nor international trading but did not specify the sort of management it does.

Seven managers indicated that they received at least one compliance verification visit to check
environmental or occupational health and safety measures in 2021. Four of them were visited
by the Ministry of Health, another by the National Environmental Technical Secretariat (SETENA)
of MINAE. The remaining two visits were carried out by an auditing/certifying agency and a
consulting firm respectively. The purpose of these visits were not legal verifications but related
to certification systems implemented voluntarily before the entry into force of Executive Decree
41052 mandatory requirements. However, INTE-ISO 14001 certification is covered by Executive
Decree 41052.

4.3 Focus Group to analyse the situation of the managers

As indicated before it was necessary to refine the process, and therefore a Focus Group was
created. It should be noted that a Focus Group is a qualitative research technique for gathering
information. It is based on a group interview with guiding questions. The group size is up to 10
participants, the moderator, and, if possible, one observer (Prieto & March, 2002).

On the grounds of the above, it was planned that the nine managers who responded to the
survey would participate in the Focus Group; finally only one did not participate.

The objectives of the Focus Group were the following:
– To introduce Recommendation ITU-T L.1032 “Guidelines and certification schemes for
e-waste recyclers”.
– To gather information on the environmental, health, and safety measures, as well as the
certifications that managers have in place.
– To learn about the perception of managers regarding the challenges in implementing
Recommendation ITU-T L.1032.

Additional information on the Focus Group is available here.

4 3 1 Structure of the Focus Group

The group worked virtually and applied three instruments to obtain information, each one with
well-defined objectives. Three blocks were developed to present general aspects of the topics,
and two types of activities were performed depending on the topic: health and safety measures,
environmental measures and management systems. The last block was devoted to knowing
participants’ perceptions of the challenges to implement Recommendation ITU-T L.1032, as
well as INTE G8 and INTE-ISO 14001 standards. Figure 64 shows the objectives of each type
of activity, as well as the instruments and platforms used.

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