Samuel Mahugnon Ahossouhe, International Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (Burkina Faso)

Urbanization leads to an increase in the quantity of waste in low-income countries, especially the waste electronic and electrical equipment or e-waste, which are end-of-life electronic and electrical products. Their principal sources are e-waste from Western countries and the technological revolution that stimulates users' desire to be technologically up to date by replacing their devices more quickly. E-waste are a potential source of health and environmental degradation due to toxic components like mercury, lead, lithium, etc. In order to reduce negative impacts of e-waste generation on environment and health, there is a need to better organize the e-waste management sector. Several solutions including recovery have been found to reduce the e-waste production. In fact, studies have shown that precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum, etc. can be extracted from e-waste.

This gives meaning to the use of the term “urban mine” in the WEEE sector. Technologies are available to make the recovery of precious metal possible and are in use in some developed countries. Urban mine can simply mean a uniform space consisting of different categories of waste. But the notion of "urban mine" becomes more relevant for high value-added secondary deposits. It’s why other definition of the urban mine talk about an immense "above ground" deposit of mineral resources that have since been extracted from the subsoil for the construction of buildings and the manufacture of numerous appliances. Unfortunately, urban mine valorization is not yet very developed in low-income countries of West Africa due to the lack of knowledge of the urban mine economical potential in these countries. Then, the main research question is: what would be the best way to reorganize the e-waste value chain, integrating the urban mine valorization (recovery of precious metals from e-waste), which would contribute significantly to the development of the circular economy in Burkina Faso? The aim of this research is to assess the potential of urban mine to promote the circular economy in low-income West African countries, with Burkina Faso as a case study. Specifically, it is to (i) develop a method for estimating the urban mine deposit adapted to the context of Burkina Faso; and (ii) develop an economic model favoring the development of a circular economy based on the management and valorization of e-waste in Burkina Faso.