E-waste 2009

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The Forum

The forum pilots and calls for innovative and competitive solutions in electronic waste management (e-waste).  In the pursuit of this goal, success stories and lessons learnt presented at the forum will showcase how e-waste helps achieve considerable breakthroughs in generating business opportunities, conserving natural resources, adding value and creating jobs along the supply chain, and abating health and environmental hazards effects.  

Objectives

To sustain the unique approaches used to attain successful solutions:  

• To enhance shared knowledge about e-waste, best practices in management, and lessons learned and their associated business opportunities.
• To create a platform consisting of various stakeholders to implement potential business opportunities.

Participants

The target participants are expected to be of executive levels entrepreneurs from ICT private sector enterprises, ICT governmental organizations, environmental affairs organizations, and non-governmental organizations.

 Why is this sector vital for the economy?

The serious health and environmental threats from e-waste pose considerable challenges to the economy in terms of management and disposal.  Components of e-waste contain lead, cadmium and other toxic substances (for example, with circuit boards, the release of lead oxide and mercury are the major adverse outcomes of improper and unsafe handling).  In addition, metal recovery from E-waste is considered a key component in the sustainable management of natural resources. Key challenges in this sector are the downside of two decades of boom in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the Arab region and the world beyond:

• Lack of proper design and enforcement of public policy and legislation on waste;
• Absence of capacity in both the private and public sectors to handle safely the disposal of e-waste;
• Education and awareness practices are nonexistent among youth and concerned parties;
• No business model with financial and economic incentives has yet been demonstrated.

Deliverables

In order to sustain the efforts and solutions put forward during the forum we seek to realize the following deliverables: 

• Initiation of an E-waste management industry in pilot countries of the region whereby generated E-waste would undergo a series of processes that  add value (value chain) to the products, such as reuse or metal recovery. 
• Launching the E-waste Management Business Support Knowledge Hub, that will assists the private sector enterprises in solving their E-waste problems. The Hub will utilize the mapping information and lessons learned in generating business matchmaking opportunities, sources of capacity building for NGOs and potential expertise in e-waste.
• Launching a Public Private Partnership consortium in cooperation with the civil society to advance the implementation of one-business model, such as, e-waste network- for-youth, and a food- for-waste initiative.

Download Forum Agenda

Venue

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