Avaliação da geração de resíduos de equipamentos eletroeletrônicos (REEES) em uma universidade comunitária

Abstract

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is a word used to refer to many electric and electronic equipment that are no longer valuable for its owners. This study evaluated the WEEE generation in a private higher education institution, located in Rio Grande do Sul state. In this study were used data from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) available in the university information system, which amounted 51.066 items during 17 years. A detailed analysis was performed about the generated WEEE characteristics and the specific characteristics of different knowledge areas. As result, many important indicators where developed for WEEE management in this kind of institution. The main WEEE generated by the institution was IT and telecommunications equipment (48.2 %), followed by Large household appliances (14.4 %), Monitoring and control instruments (13.3 %), Electrical and electronic tools (10.9 %) and Consumer equipment (9.8 %). Over 400 EEEs classes were identified in the institution although, except for Monitoring and control instruments, the two main EEEs in each class correspond by at least 50 % of its categories. In addition, it was noted that the majority of WEEE was generated by the university administration (29.3 %), followed by the computer classrooms (17.3 %). Those two areas feature low life EEEs, while other areas like Biology and Exact Sciences, due to the high number of analytics equipment used, have a longer life cycle EEEs, resulting in smaller WEEE generation. This was noted in the knowledge areas per capita WEEE generation, with biological sciences showing the bigger results (14.58 kg/student.yr), while the average was 1.02 kg/student.yr. The institution diagnostic demonstrate many problems in WEEE management, especially due to lack of planning regarding their generation, resulting in an absence of a proper place for their storage. In addition, it was noted that many researchers, due to lack of maintenance resources, preferred to store obsolete machines in their labs. All these characteristic result in a great complexity in WEEE management in higher education institutions, mostly due the big diversity, increasing the recycling complexity.