Implementation of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive in Finland: Evaluation of the collection network and challenges of the effective WEEE management

•The WEEE Directive has been successfully implemented in Finland in a few years.•The collection and recovery requirements of the Directive have clearly been exceeded.•Free riding and unofficial collection are the main challenges of the current system.•The re-use potential of the end-of-life electronics is significantly underused.•More information and publicity are needed to raise consumers’ awareness.

Further to the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, setting up efficient collection schemes is necessary to ensure the recovery targets set. Following the subsidiary principle, the WEEE Directive defines only the general requirements for mandatory collection and recycling objectives. The modalities of the logistics and the organisation of the take-back schemes are left to the choice of Member States. In this paper, the implementation of the WEEE Directive and the development of the WEEE recovery infrastructure in Finland are described and the challenges to the effective management of the WEEE recovery system in Finland are expressed. It can be said that the implementation of the WEEE Directive has succeeded in Finland and, at the same time, the legislative basis has been enacted. In addition, a functional WEEE recovery infrastructure has been built and, the collection requirements of the WEEE Directive have been exceeded in a relatively short time. However, the paper outlines that some inefficient practices still exist, particularly in the registration and WEEE collection stages. It is concluded that raising awareness would lead to a more environmentally sound behaviour and would, ultimately, improve WEEE recovery efficiency.