The amount of e-waste is growing relentlessly, while its management is often questionable and
causes harm to people and the environment. Only one-fifth of e-waste is properly recycled. This
master’s thesis focuses on the e-waste management system in Slovenia and its key challenges.
We complement the analysis of secondary data and semi-structured interviews with a systems
thinking approach. The thesis presents the stakeholders involved in the Slovenian e-waste system
and the connections between them, as well as the anomalies occurring within the extended
producer responsibility system. We examine e-waste flows and find that a significant share of e-
waste generated in Slovenia is processed abroad, resulting in additional resource consumption
and the loss of jobs and raw materials. We identify problems in collection and recycling, such as
the improper handling of batteries and the removal of valuable components from e-waste. We
observe that the system lacks incentives for waste prevention, repair, and reuse. The thesis
proposes measures to reduce these issues, including government incentives for companies and
communities, legislative requirements for the ecodesign of electronic devices, more effective
monitoring of e-waste flows, and more.
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