The regulation of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) industry is of priority importance in the EU environmental and circular economy agenda. In this context, single Member States have to implement effective policies to increase the amount of collected waste and close materials flows. To this end, the design of adequate collection infrastructures and the geographical proximity to dedicated facilities, named Collection Centers (CCs), are key factors affecting users’ willingness to dispose of their WEEE. In this work, we propose a systematic approach to evaluate the users’ spatial access to WEEE recovery networks. Specifically, we introduce a dashboard of quantitative indicators to assess the presence of sufficient CCs compared to the demand in a given area (availability) and at measuring the proximity between consumers and CCs (accessibility). We perform an extensive application to the Italian case, which proves the capability of the proposed indicators to: (i) allow comparative analysis among different areas of the country; (ii) shed light on the impact of spatial dimensions on the amount of collected waste; (iii) support decisions concerning the optimal location of new CCs. In this latter regard, we also discuss, formalize and test possible strategies for expanding the network.

对废弃电气和电子设备 (WEEE) 行业的监管在欧盟环境和循环经济议程中具有优先重要性。在这种情况下，单个成员国必须实施有效的政策来增加收集的废物量并关闭材料流。为此，适当的收集基础设施的设计以及与称为收集中心 (CC) 的专用设施的地理邻近性是影响用户处置其 WEEE 意愿的关键因素。在这项工作中，我们提出了一种系统方法来评估用户对 WEEE 恢复网络的空间访问。具体来说，我们引入了一个定量指标仪表板，以评估与给定区域的需求（可用性）相比是否存在足够的 CC) 以及衡量消费者和 CC 之间的接近程度（可访问性）。我们对意大利案例进行了广泛的应用，证明了所提议指标的能力：(i) 允许在该国不同地区之间进行比较分析；(ii) 阐明空间维度对收集的废物量的影响；(iii) 支持有关新 CC 最佳位置的决定。在后者方面，我们还讨论、形式化和测试扩展网络的可能策略。