12. Conceptual Framework to Social Life Cycle Assessment of e-Waste Management: A Case Study in the City of Rio de Janeiro

Opposing the problems generated by the negative impacts of industrial production, the corporations, on behalf of minimizing the impacting branches of its reality, over the last four decades, are trying to incorporate frameworks focused on the appliance of the sustainability on its processes. During the last 20 years, a small but growing portion of companies is volunteering to attach social and environmental issues to its business models. One of the major recent issues on production management is about the generated waste, post-consumption matters, and aspects of the reverse logistics, in other words a framework of solid waste management that covers the products’ end-of-life. On developing countries, these models are only on its initial phase. There is no regulatory concern on the topic and no economic incentives, and the people who collect this kind of material do not have any instruction on how to do it, regarding its risks to health, safety, and the environment. Setting off on the recognition of the system’s limits and the major actors involved on its process of solid waste management is a necessity, elaborating the positive and negative social aspects linked to this activity, starting from the product life cycle way of thinking. The purpose of this chapter is to present and analyze the social impacts of the solid waste management specifically regarding the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), taking the city of Rio de Janeiro as a case study.