Understanding the challenge of managing waste from electrical and electronic equipment.

Landfills in Poland are being increasingly cluttered with waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) due to the lack of proper processing. Most people aren’t aware of how to properly dispose of these materials, which are being quickly replaced due to their programmed obsolescence. The Polish-Norwegian partnership for knowledge transfer in management of the waste electrical and electronic equipment in Poland, with particular attention to provinces: Mazowieckie and Slaskie (WEEEZO) was created to disseminate knowledge and best practices about these issues. Its main objective is to support businesses and local government units to become more conscious agents when dealing with this specific type of waste.

The project was designed to offer a series of services to disseminate knowledge and best practices, all free of charge:

• Seeking and promoting technology in accordance with defined clients needs.
• Technology audits: performing assessment of technological potential of the company and its ability to adapt to new technologies.
• Match-making: matching the offered technology with the ones requested through the web-based system.
• Business meetings: organization of business meetings for the companies / institutions involved in WEEE management and processing, especially in the framework of brokerage events and national fairs.
• Training: provision of training related to new available technologies, finance and innovation in reference to WEEE.

Project participants could count on professional help when seeking innovative solutions not available on the Polish market, besides advice in funding possibilities and its further implementation.

SINTEF Foundation, the Project Contractor, entrusted IDN with full responsibility for the implementation of the project. This partnership between Norway and Poland delivered big numbers on all the planned services:

• Contacted more than 200 project stakeholders.
• Conducted 75 technology audits.
• Prepared base 100 related technologies for managing WEEE.
• Organized seven training workshops in legislation, new technologies and funding to implement innovation.
• Organized six seminars regarding issues of WEEE.
• With the analysis, it was issued a monograph concerning aspects of the managing system for WEEE in Poland and other European countries, also selecting state of the art technology for processing the waste.