Page 44 - Implementation of the ITU-T International Standards for the Sustainable Management of Electrical and Electronic Equipment: On the road to a circular economy in Argentina

Implementation of the ITU-T International Standards for the Sustainable Management of
Electrical and Electronic Equipment: On the road to a circular economy in Argentina

3 6 1 Methodology: scope, considerations, and limitations

Figure 11 shows the methodology applied to study the flows of the 11 selected tracers. It
comprises four steps of the EEE value chain at the national level. Each step is made up of one
or more processes where EEE/WEEE are valorized, used, discarded or managed.

In Figure 11 the processes are represented by rectangles and identified by the letter "P" followed
by a number. Table 4 shows the codes used in the flow diagrams:

Table 4: Flow diagram codes

Source: Own elaboration, 2021.

According to the scope of the Case Study, only new EEE flows and WEEE flows were considered;
i.e., used EEE flows were excluded. In addition, there was no information on product inventories
for any of the processes given the lack thereof (e.g., the stock of televisions or refrigerators in
households or in dealers’ warehouses).

The EEE or WEEE flows occur between processes within the country (e.g., from importers and
producers to dealers and/or consumers), or between these internal processes and external
ones (e.g., imports and exports).

In Figure 11 each flow has a unique two numbers code separated by a dash (#-#). The number
preceding the dash indicates the process from which the flow originates and the number
following the dash indicates the process to which the flow is directed. The number zero (0)
denotes that the exchange is with a process not included in the scope of the study (e.g.,
countries abroad for imports or exports). The letter "X" denotes flows to unknown processes.
Flows of domestic production, imports and exports are additionally denoted with the symbols
"pn", "im" and "ex" respectively. The symbol "re" denotes the refunctionalized WEEE flow, while
the WEEE managed in a different way is identified with by the symbol "ot".

23