Analysis of Households’ E-Waste Awareness, Disposal Behavior, and Estimation of Potential Waste Mobile Phones towards an Effective E-Waste Management System in Dubai

Abstract

During the recent decades, the world has seen ongoing economic and technological development which resulted in the generation of huge volumes of electrical and electronic waste (e-waste). In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ranks among countries with large e-waste generation due to its consumers’ high spending on electronic devices thereby resulting in a high obsolescence rate in the country. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze the e-waste management and recycling practices in the UAE. It takes Dubai as a case study and conducts a structured questionnaire to analyze households’ awareness, consumption of electronic devices in general and mobile phones in particular, and the disposal behavior of e-waste. Waste mobile phones is taken as a key representative in this study, in which potential waste mobile phones is estimated using the Approximation 1 method in the period 2021–2030. Results from the survey illustrated gaps among households’ awareness and disposal behavior of e-waste, where e-waste recycling rates were noticed to be low. Based on these gaps, strategies were proposed for an effective e-waste management system in the context of Dubai, and were supported by the proposal of an e-waste legislation framework in the UAE.