Creation of green jobs: opportunity to reduce high unemployment in Western Balkans

Simović, Vladimir and Domazet, Ivana (2014) Creation of green jobs: opportunity to reduce high unemployment in Western Balkans. In: Toward green economy: opportunities and obstacles for Western Balkan countries. Xlibris Publishing, Bloomington, pp. 94-112. ISBN 978-1-503532-946

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Abstract

In the period during, and immediately after the global economic crisis, the Western Balkan countries were challenged by the problem of rising unemployment. While governments of these countries are trying to address this issue by implementing various economic policy measures, it seems that on this occasion they ignore the potential of the green economy and the opportunities for opening of green jobs. In this area, particularly interesting are job positions that could be created within the industry of electronic waste recycling in the offing. The amount of e-waste is increasing at an exponential rate in global terms, which is a natural consequence of the fact that the modern society is migrating towards the information society, which implies the growing use of information technologies (Drašković, Zubović and Domazet, 2013, pp. 106-123). The lifespan of these technologies is getting shorter, and the natural result of that process is an increase in the amount of electronic waste. Global e-waste is growing at a rate of 5% per year, making it the fastest growing waste on the planet. Each year, the amount of electronic scrap is increasing by 50 tons (Drаšković, Domazet, 2013, pp. 234-238). Every hour 4,000 tons of electronic waste is being disposed on our planet. Consequently, the economic potential of electronic waste recycling is enormous, as very valuable materials that can be re-used in the production process may be obtained by it. On the other hand, one should not ignore the environmental side of the whole process, since the electronic waste contains a large amount of hazardous substances that, if not disposed properly and recycled, may have very negative impact on the environment. It is expected that electronic waste recycling industry in the near future becomes one of the fastest growing economic activities on a world scale just as a direct consequence of the rapid development of IT industry (Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, "Upotreba informaciono-komunikacionih tehnologija u Srbiji u 2013. godini", Belgrade, 2014). As a natural result of this process, it is expected that electronic waste recycling industry to absorb a large amount of the workforce from the labor market. This fact represents an excellent development opportunity for the countries of the Western Balkans. The first part of this paper pinpoints the problem of unemployment and provides the associated statistics in the Western Balkans(Domazet, Filimonović 2012). The second part focuses on the process of recycling of electronic waste and its significance in the modern economy. The third part is done research potential industry to recycling electronic waste in Serbia as a possible absorber part of the unemployed in this, as well as other countries of the Western Balkans. The results are summarized in the conclusion.

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