INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Volume 4, No 4, 2014 © Copyright by the authors - Licensee IPA- Under Creative Commons license 3.0 Research article ISSN 0976 – 4402 Received on November 2013 Published on January 2014 444 E-waste management: An emerging global crisis and the Malaysian scenario Ahmad-Faisal Alias 1 , Mohd Bakri Ishak 2 , Siti Nur Awanis Mohamad Zulkifli 1 , Rusamah Abdul Jalil 1 1- Department of Town and Regional Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) (Perak), 32610 Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia. 2- Department of Environmental Management, Faculty of Environmental Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. faisal7306@yahoo.com doi: 10.6088/ijes.2014040400001 ABSTRACT Rapid progress in standard of living and advances in information and communication technology (ICT) has generated an enormous amount of end of life electrical and electronic equipment which eventually become e-waste. Although it represents a small percentage of total solid waste, e-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world, with most of them flowing from developed to developing countries for the purpose of recovery and recycling activities. However, poor recovery and recycling facilities produce toxic residues which were eventually landfilled or openly incinerated with severe negative effects on human and environmental health. Although the Basel Convention and other legislations were introduced by nations to limit the global trans-boundary shipment of the highly toxic e-waste, the illicit trade is difficult to trace and regulate due to multiple loopholes. Consequently, only a small fraction of generated e-waste finds its way to licensed material recovery facilities (MRFs) for recycling purposes, while the rest is recovered by the informal sector in the developing countries. One of latest e-waste reduction strategies introduced is the extended producer responsibility. Although the issue of e-waste is quite new in Malaysia, the country is also grappling with the crisis and has become one the main destinations of the global e-waste trade. Keywords, electronic waste, toxic, environmental impact, Basel Convention, extended producer responsibility 1. Introduction The alarming fast expansion rate of e-waste generation fuelled by the rapid economic growth and increase demand for electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) or consumer electronics devices (CEDs) is emerging as a global crisis, and due to the hazardous effects and toxicity of e-waste, the problem has become very worrisome (Saphore et al., 2007; Abul Hasan et al., 2010; Sthiannopkao and Wong, 2012). With digital and electronic technologies rapidly advancing and ever-changing, product life cycle of EEEs has declined significantly, thus becoming out of style and obsolete very quickly (Widmer et al., 2005; Osibanjo and Nnorom, 2007). The exponential boom and growth of the information and communication technology (ICT) has increased the demand of new EEE resulting in expanding volume of obsolete or scrapped EEE. In addition, the influx of cheap Chinese-made and imitation EEE products has forced prices down and made them affordable in developing countries. Generally, Chinese and imitation made EEE goods are considered as of low quality and having shorter useful life