The Significance of Public Involvement on Minimizing the Public Health and Environmental Impacts from Electronic Waste Recycling at the Community Level

     To minimize the impact of electronic waste recycling at the community level on public health and the environment, careful planning and appropriate solutions are needed. The authors worked with the Khok Saat community in Kalasin Province as a case study and found that it is most effective to involve all the stakeholders during management of the problem solving process. Some of the most important stakeholders are national and local government, community members, and local recyclers. There are two phases to this study. In the first phase, four existing public participation models were used to develop a new and more suitable public participation model. This new model identifies and includes seven groups of stakeholders and five degrees of participation. In the second phase, the new model was used to identify problems and find solutions regarding e-waste recycling in the affected community.
     To apply the new model, focus groups were created and their opinions and views were gathered and analyzed by applying the Appreciation Influence Control (AIC) technique. Face to face interviews were conducted with various representative stakeholders using both structured and unstructured questionnaires completed by all participants. The focus group technique was shown to be the most suitable and most efficient approach to gathering information, and for delivering and clarifying information to the participants. The resulting effective solutions were divided into three Solution Groups, namely ‘Use of an effective business model’, ‘Delivery of knowledge, skill, and technology’, and ‘Development of local regulations and law enforcement’. All three Solution Groups must be implemented in order to successfully decrease environmental and health impacts in the Khok Saat community. The new problem solving approach as well as the action model developed should be applicable to any other community regardless of country or culture.

Keywords:  Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, Environmental Impact, Public Health Impact, Waste Recycling, Community Level