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Electrical and electronic waste (e-waste) is currently the largest growing waste stream. It is hazardous, complex and expensive to treat in an environmentally sound manner, and there is a general lack of legislation or enforcement surrounding it.Today, most e-waste is being discarded in the general waste stream. Of the e-waste in developed countries that is sent for recycling, 80 per cent ends up being shipped (often illegally) to developing countries to be recycled by hundreds of thou-sands of informal workers

Note by the secretariatThe secretariat has the honour to circulate, for the information of participants, the report of the International workshop on hazardous substances within the life-cycle of electrical and electronic products, held in Vienna, from 29 to 31 March 2011. The report, contained in the annex to the present note, has been transmitted by the secretariats of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic