In a growing number of countries producers and importers are legally forced to take care of the collection and environmentally sustainable processing of their products after their active life. Different networks have been set up to comply with the above legislation. The EU is considering guidelines for European wide introduction of producer responsibility for consumer electronics. One of the countries running
ahead of this are The Netherlands. In this paper, an overview is given of the logistics network set up in the Netherlands for collecting and processing used large white goods. Based on the results obtained for a number of case studies, the functioning of
three alternative network structures is benchmarked with respect to the cost per product, the amount of recycling and the convenience for the initial disposers (users) of large white goods. Moreover, return volumes are monitored. Bugs and features are discussed, which is not only of relevance for The Netherlands, but for entire Europe, since the Dutch system is seen as one of the potential role models for the EU.