Reverse logistics of electrical and electronic waste

• Grant number: 15/15664-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2015
• End date: July 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law - Private Law
• Principal Investigator: Jorge Alberto Soares Tenório
• Grantee: Letícia Beatriz de Oliveira de Souza
• Host Institution: Escola Politécnica (EP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 12/51871-9 - Study Center for Technology in Waste Solid Treatment and Recycling - SCTWSTR, AP.TEM

Abstract

The National Solid Waste Policy (PNRS, in Portuguese) presents itself as an important regulatory framework for sustainable solid waste management in Brazilian legislation. By providing, in Article 6.III, that the solid waste must be conceived as "an economic good with social value, job generator and citizenship promoter", the legislator recognizes the environmental and social importance of solid waste, as well as the failure of the legal regulation, adopted by the countries of Roman-Germanic tradition, of res derelictae, in which prevails the owner or possessor irresponsibility when abandoning the thing. Because of the recognition of the environmental value of solid waste, its generator remains responsible for the solid waste and the damage caused by it in post-consumption moment. Therefore, the PNRS establishes, among its principles and objectives, the shared responsibility for the product life cycle, in which economic and social agents will promote, in a chained and individualized way, efforts to promote logistics reverse of solid waste and its environmentally appropriate disposal. Reverse logistics, as an important legal instrument of PNRS, is the "way back" of the solid waste in the production cycle, in which the product placed on the market, consumed and turned into waste, must return to the productive chain and recover its economic importance or must be forwarded to environmentally appropriate disposal. This research aims to elucidate the concepts of reverse logistics, sectoral agreement, shared responsibility and other important terms to understand the PNRS and how Brazilian legislation has been dealing with the e-waste problem.