Assessment of e-waste management of IT equipment in the education sector in the Kingdom of Bahrain

Other Title(s)

تقييم إدارة النفايات الإلكترونية لأجهزة تقنية المعلومات في قطاع التعليم في مملكة البحرين

Dissertant

al-Idan, Basmah Salih Abd Allah

Thesis advisor

al-Sayyid, Ibrahim Abd al-Jalil
al-Shami, Jamal al-Din Muhammad

University

Arabian Gulf University

Faculty

College of Graduate Studies

Department

Environmental Management

University Country

Bahrain

Degree

Master

Degree Date

2013

English Abstract

Electronic waste (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment WEEE) describes discarded electrical or electronic equipment.

Over the past decades, the volume of electrical and electronic waste has significantly increased.

This has been due to the rapid changes in technology, decrease in prices, and the growth in Internet use, which resulted in fast growing amounts of electronic waste around the world.

Not only EWaste is being generated at escalating rate, but it is also being managed inappropriately.

E-waste consists of a multitude of components including toxic substances that can have major impacts on human health and the environment if not properly handled.

In the Kingdom of Bahrain, E-waste is mostly mixed with other types of municipal wastes and dumped into landfills.

Accordingly, this study aimed at assessing the current management practices of IT wastes in the education sector in Bahrain, and the awareness level of the major stakeholders of the sector on the same issue. The study results indicate a low level of awareness on the E-waste problem amongst the major stakeholders ranking it the second last environmental problem in Bahrain. IT wastes are mostly collected by a group of informal scrappers, and dismantled manually, while some components of commercial values are sold.

One company collects those components and exports them mainly to India and Pakistan following the procedure of the Basel convention of trans-boundary movements of hazardous wastes.

It is worthy to note that some charity organizations are active in collecting old computers, have them refurbished, and donating them to needy families.

The study recommends a number of major elements of a national strategy for environmentally sound management of E-wastes in order to protect public health and the environment. Furthermore, it recommends scaling up this research to cover other major IT users in Bahrain such as banks, Industry, and retailers.

Main Subjects

Earth Sciences, Water and Environment

Topics

• Management
• Bahrain
• Electronic waste

No. of Pages

146

Table of Contents

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

Language

English

Data Type

Arab Theses

Record ID

BIM-421227