A three-stage methodology for initiating an effective management system for electronic waste in Turkey

Abstract

Due to both consumption and obsolescence rates of new technology and shorter life cycles of electronic products, the volume of electronic waste (e-waste) is significantly increasing. While managing a great amount of e-waste, government institutions face compelling problems because of the economic and environmental concerns. This study uses a three-stage methodology to initiate the e-waste management activities in context of a collection campaign in Istanbul, explaining the potential benefits and underlying reasons. The problem includes selecting a superior set among a large but finite number of alternatives. Since it is hard to utilize advanced compensatory methods to solve these problems, a three-stage methodology is proposed for systematically reducing the number of alternatives. In this study, we employ the methodology to determine the locations of collection nodes in Istanbul. The main reason that we select Istanbul, is the requirement of an urgent intervention to deal with the large quantities of e-wastes. The result of this study will strongly assist the authorities to configure well-structured strategies for future e-waste management system. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.