**Abstract**

This chapter adds to the body of literature on the Circular Economy (CE), urban mining, and their intersection with consumer behaviour, by first providing a review of existing and emergent EU regulations aimed towards enhancing the collection rate of household WEEE. The fast growth of the EEE waste stream and its potential for Urban Mining as well as the inability of WEEE collection to keep up with the growth of the EEE industry is showcased with statistical data. The final section critically analyses the literature the intersection between consumer behaviour and closed-loop supply chains for EEE, identified through a systematic keyword search to ensure replicability. The findings point at a lack of theoretical, methodological and product-case heterogeneity among the identified sources, with most of them employing the Theory of Planned Behaviour and survey methods and focusing on mobile phones or general WEEE. While the literature suggests important behavioural differences across EEE categories, this was not representatively explored. The final section contributes to filling this gap by developing a taxonomy of EEE categories based on characteristics that may predispose consumer behaviour. The identified dimensions are: size, involvement, long-term reliability expectations, value type, internet access, multifunctionality, the quality of being outdated and social meaning.

**Keywords:** circular economy, urban mining, consumer behaviour, waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), e-waste, electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), EU regulation

## **1. Introduction**

As an increasing number of countries is focusing on CE [1–4], so too does the treatment of WEEE get more attention in academics [4–8]. A topic that has seen little attention is the role of consumers, and specifically consumer behaviour, in the retrieval of household WEEE from anthropogenic stocks, a process called urban mining. This chapter will first provide a short background as to why the proper retrieval of WEEE is important, followed by an overview of the state-of-the-art in WEEE regulations and collection. The main focus of this chapter will be on consumer behaviour in Closed Loop Supply Chains for Electrical and Electronic Equipment (*e*CLSC) to better understand issues with household WEEE collection.

WEEE that is not properly collected and treated often gets dumped or finds its way into the informal sector where it is processed with methods bad for the environment and human health [9]. Informal WEEE dumping grounds and processing sites are known to contaminate soils, air, and water, including major rivers [10]. This is the result from using unsafe processing methods such as mechanical treatment (leading to a lot of hazardous dust), open burning (releasing toxic fumes), and leaching processes (with waste acid then dumped and toxic fumes being released), having significant effects to the environment and on human health. Health effects especially affect children that are often forced to labour on informal WEEE processing sites, developing changes in typhoid function, a lower forced vital capacity, changes in cellular expression, changes in behaviour and temperament [11], furthermore, exposure to WEEE can later lead to reduced virility, stillbirths, spontaneous abortions, premature births, reduced birth lengths, reduced birthweights and other birth defects showing that improper WEEE handling can damage more than one generation of people at exposure. WEEE is also known to damage DNA and lower educational outcomes.

The urban mining of EEE, which can be defined as a process to retrieve (raw) materials and energy from urban areas, specifically from anthropogenic stocks of WEEE, has only recently started to garner attention in academics [12]. Urban mining is seen as a must to achieve ambitious circular economy targets and an effective method to reduce supply risks of critical raw materials, such as rare earth metals in the EEE industry, as well as for base metals, such as copper (of which an estimate stock in the EU of 82 Megatons exists) [13]. The urban mining of WEEE has the potential to be an industry worth 57 billion USD a year [4]. Besides the economic potential, urban mining is typically better for the environment as compared to the traditional mining of natural resources [14]. The procurement of sufficient volumes of WEEE is currently a prohibiting factor for urban mining. Improvements in the collection rates of household WEEE from consumers are deemed essential to develop the WEEE recycling industry and curb the problems with the rapidly growing EEE waste stream [15]. The growth of the WEEE waste stream is further evidenced in **Table 1**. In 2019, at the global scale, only 17.4% of WEEE got properly collected, with an estimated 44.3 megaton of WEEE likely to be dumped and/or illegally traded to be recycled in a non-environmentally and health damaging way on the informal market, a growth of 7.4 megaton when compared to the 36.9 megaton that saw its way into the informal market or was illegally dumped in 2014 [9].

In this chapter we aim to contribute to the growing body of literature on household WEEE collection and urban mining in the EU and the role of consumers in *e*CLSCs. **Section 2** provides an overview of regulations and directives relevant to the collection of WEEE from consumers in the EU, as well as recent trends in the amount of household EEE put to market in the EU and the amount of household WEEE collected in the EU. **Section 3** provides an in-depth study of the role of consumers in *e*CLSCs. **Section 4** provides a discussion of our findings. **Section 5** presents concluding remarks pertaining to this chapter.
