Meeting E-Waste Targets in Italy: an evaluation of the national WEEE management system

Sammanfattning: As volumes of e-waste (WEEE) are increasing worldwide, the environmental and health impacts caused by this waste stream are leading to rising concern over how it is managed and disposed of. In the European Union this has been addressed by the WEEE Directive, a policy requiring all Member States to have a system for managing e-waste. The revised policy (Directive 2012/19/EU) sets increasingly ambitious targets for countries to achieve. Within this context, this thesis evaluates the Italian WEEE management system with particular focus on how the policy is transposed, how it is received by the stakeholders and whether or not the intended outcomes are actually being reached. The WEEE Directive is transposed differently across all Member States and this leaves questions about how national systems perform and where their weaknesses lie. Using a set of complementary analytical methods, this research evaluates the performance of the Italian system with the use of intervention theory combined with three performance criteria: effectiveness, legitimacy and transparency. The findings of this thesis highlight the areas in which Italian WEEE management is facing challenges and where it is succeeding. On the basis of the findings, recommendations are provided to enhance the system performance in light of the increasingly stringent EU targets.