Sustainable development and end of life management for developping countries

Abstract The world is facing an ever growing stream of electronics waste as a result both of the rapidly increasing number of new applications for electronics and of the accelerating pace of technological development and ever shorter service life. On the other hand the industry of developing countries is or will be dominated by small and medium sized enterprises. The usual philosophy - cheap workforce in such countries - should be revised by installation of automatized devices in developing countries. Here a new idea - “high tech” electronic scrap recycling for developing countries will be presented. Used PC’s and other electr(on)ic devices are usually moved in developing countries because these devices are working properly and they are reasonable cheap. From the viewpoint of End-of-life Management (EOL) this enlarges the life time of such products. On the other hand the amount of electr(on)ic scrap is increasing dramatically in such countries in a very short time. If there is no recycling strategy these countries are on the way to “scrap countries”.