Composed of parasitic agents that do not add value, just cost, consisting of gathering people walking behind a collection vehicle; zonal middlemen who buy from collectors materials such as plastic, paper, glass, among others; regional middlemen who buy from the above; and people or companies that specialize in buying “lots” of waste products, whether institutional or industrial, who sold the products to the zonal intermediaries and/or regional EEE (electrical and electronic equipment): those that require electricity to run or electromagnetic fields.
Published in Chapter:
The Electronic Obsolescence as an Opportunity for Social Entrepreneurship: The Case of EEE in Manizales, Colombia
Diego Lopez Cardona (Universidad de Manizales, Colombia) and Rocío del S. Tabares Hoyos (Universidad de Manizales, Colombia)
Copyright: © 2016
|Pages: 24
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-0097-1.ch023
Abstract
The chapter contains the concepts of Social Entrepreneurship, Planned and Perceived Obsolescence, Corporate Social Responsibility, the legal framework for Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) waste, and Reverse Logistics, as theoretical support from different authors. Applied to Manizales, Colombia, the study was conducted with a quantitative and qualitative approach. The information was collected through surveys and interviews with 26 entrepreneurs and 331 households' consumers to know the type of appliances, how they buy, change and use them, and the chain of intermediaries. With planned and perceived obsolescence, products lose their life in a short time, are dumped as Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), and collected by people of low educational and economic level that survive in precarious conditions. Due to these results and conclusions, we offer in the chapter the opportunity to generate proposals for their inclusion and social development.