A model for the management of WEEE reverse logistics

Product take-back legislations shift responsibility of disposal from consumers to producers. The most known example is for the disposal of the Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). Traditional WEEE management approaches focus a single actor and on specific WEEE categories and do not optimise the system as a whole. This paper we present a linear programming model to manage the assignment of the WEEE flows to consortia of producers, in order to minimise the logistics and administrative costs of the whole system. A case study is used to validate the approach and the potential applications of the model.