Abstract for:Public Policy Impact in the Life Cycle of the Electrical and Electronic Equipment Waste. Colombia exemplifies Latin America Status.
Colombia is characterized as a country with a high median income according to its per capita GDP, despite the wide socioeconomic differences in its population of 48 million inhabitants. The television is the household apparatus with the highest penetration with 93%, followed by the refrigerator, the washing machine, stereo equipment and internet access devices with 58.04% each. The annual electrical and electronic equipment – WEEE waste reaches 5.3 kg/capita, however there is no consensus on the figures, possibly due to underreporting and because the collection, disassembly and recycling tasks of the physical are mostly carried out through the informal channel. Through a system dynamics simulation, the impact of the life cycle public policies is established for four devices: television, refrigerator, sound equipment and luminaires. Results are evaluated using energy consumption, devices in use and in reuse, material collected, recovered, and toxic and in sanitary landfill as indicators. Most policies are associated with the formalization of the informal sector, which allows greater material recovery thus ensures a circular economy and others are energy efficiency policies that reduce its consumption. These results are better than other instruments such as taxes, and increase of the energy tariff. However, the scenario where all the