Management. U.S. EPA and Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration (Taiwan EPA) coordinate the International E-Waste Management Network (IEMN), which has brought together environmental officials from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and North America to exchange best practices on e-waste management since 2011.
EPA efforts support the United States government’s National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship, which details the federal government’s plan to enhance the management of electronics throughout the product lifecycle.
EPA also collaborates with the Solving the E-waste Problem Initiative (Step) EXIT to jointly address the e-waste problem in developing countries. Step, formerly known as UNU-Step, was previously an initiative under the United Nations University (UNU). EPA and UNU first signed a cooperative agreement to work together on e-waste in November 2010 and then again in 2015. Some of the work undertaken by UNU-Step included tracking global flows of e-waste, the Person-in-the-Port project in Nigeria, optimization of an e-waste dismantling facility in Ethiopia and the development of a tool to help gather information on volumes of e-waste generated within countries and exported to others. EPA is a founding member of the Step Initiative and serves on the Step Supervisory Committee.