The Electronic Obsolescence as an Opportunity for Social Entrepreneurship: The Case of EEE in Manizales, Colombia

Introduction1

In Colombia, due to the few public policies related to environmental management, and specifically the control of manufacturing, distribution, and sales of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), some market strategies concerning to Planned and Perceived Obsolescence² (Valquíria & Bonifacio, 2013) have been implemented to reduce the time of use of products by consumers. Having completed its life cycle, the Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is thrown in the trash mixed with other organic, building, and metalworking wastes. As a result, pollution increases and a huge problem arises as a great challenge for the society and the authorities that manage and regulate the country or region, given the large volume of EEE waste, which mostly gets tossed.

This chapter is intended to address how social entrepreneurship can be an opportunity for social inclusion of those who collect, recycle and reuse waste products. The problem lies in the few opportunities offered by the agents involved in the collection process, and belonging to a parasitic intermediation chain, using people with low educational level, with few job opportunities and many social problems, being most individuals who are not associated or included in a program of social inclusion. Similarly, the concepts of planned and perceived obsolescence as trading strategies result in businesses and industries engaged in selling products in different versions to force change, so that the user feels an unconsciously need to have analyzed this increasingly older product and compare it to the new products launched on the market.

Selective harvesting strategies and environmental management of waste computers and-or peripherals, as well as EEE, is now just beginning to be regulated, to prevent and control environmental degradation. Collecting programs are now producing small results, as they are based on routes established by the firm that has the monopoly of waste management. Vehicles generally guided by employees endowed with a low educational level that select different types of waste, such as plastics, cardboard, heavy metals, and some high-volume WEEE to classify them afterward. These informal workers carry this waste to a collection center, according to their specialty. Some intermediaries buy according to the law of supply and demand. This intermediary is responsible for selling the volume of raw material to companies.

Therefore, based on the potential of social entrepreneurship as an opportunity to form working groups with people who collect WEEE and training them in the extraction of precious metals which are manufactured, we can establish a project of social innovation grouping this community with low level of education, low income, health conditions, and deplorable housing, and we can step in improving their quality of life. WEEE recycling becomes an opportunity for social entrepreneurship.

The case study presented a response to an inventory of consumption of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) in the city of Manizales. It was made from conducting surveys to recycling companies (26) and consumers (331), which allowed knowing the type of EEE used in homes, the life, the way of acquisition, the frequency with which they change the reasons for that change and the final repository once it has completed its life cycle.

With the results, we hope to contribute to alternative solutions to the problem of the current economic system of production that does not conform at all to harmony and balance that nature requires. Therefore, to counter planned obsolescence, the key will be the commitment and responsibility with which the laws of manufacture of each product are met, of course, without neglecting corporate growth by implementing new business models to rectify this phenomenon.