## 1 Introduction
Provision 8 of the Waste Framework Directive 2008/9818 [25], a rather generic provision is, in fact, confined to the decision of the Member States to decide whether or not to introduce the EPR (\"may adopt\"), and in this case, in what form (merely financial, or even organizational responsibility, for example, in the case of the acceptance of the products returned after consumption). Figure 2: The trend of e-waste quantity produced in recent years globally. The implementation of the WEEE and RoHS directives proved to be difficult, and only one-third of the waste from electrical and electronic equipment was collected and properly treated [26]. Consequently, in 2012, following a long legislative process, the modification of Directive 2012/19/EU (WEEE) [27] and of Directive 2012/18/EU (RoHS) [28] was approved, but the regime based on extended producer responsibility has remained unchanged. At the national level, still on the level of the general discipline on waste, the regulation on EPR is contained in art. 178 bis of Legislative Decree 3 April 2006, n. 152 [29] entitled \"Extended responsibility of the producer\" and inserted in the single environmental text by article 3 of the legislative decree 3 December 2010, n. 205 [30]. This provision does not go, in concrete, beyond a mere affirmation of principle, concretized with primary legislation and on a precise European constraint, i.e., in the implementation of specific directives, such as the directive 2012/19/EU on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment--WEEE. On the contrary, in the United States, there is no unique position about the EPR. Much of the legislation on the subject derives from the courts (after all, we are in a common-law system), often contradictory in this respect, as well as with respect to the applicable legislation [31]. In any case, US companies are the most avant-garde in terms of protecting the environment for e-waste [32]. In another example of a non-European Country, Korea, the EPR related to e-waste was introduced in 2003 [33]. Therefore, to date, in terms of e-waste in the EU states, hence also in Italy, an attempt is being made to promote sustainable development, moving from a linear economy, based on the typical scheme extract, produce, usage, and disposal to a circular economy, in which it is necessary to prevent waste and promote recycling activities [34; 35]. The circular economy is, therefore, a planned economic system to reuse materials in successive production cycles, reducing waste to the minimum [36]. Instead of being thrown away, the product should be returned to the manufacturer according to the logic of reverse logistics. In other words, the positive impacts of the circular economy are derived from the adoption of recovery, reuse, recycling, sharing, and collaboration practices. These practices make it possible to replace raw materials along the different stages of the value chain, whether they are products or services, starting from innovation in the concept and design phase, leading to the definition of recovery processes and reverse logistics typical of management of products at the end of their life-cycle. In this scenario, the proposed work aims to identify and evaluate the possibility to enhance the e-waste hierarchy applied to RFID tags from the producer point of view, analyzing different solutions to improve the environmental impact and reduce the EPR of the producer at any level of the waste chain. In this perspective, the novelty of this work consists on analyzing and proposing solutions for the RFID e-waste hierarchy, while to date, the actual concern is only related to employing RFID tags for general waste traceability and control, without considering the impact of RFID as e-waste themselves or to the material recovery from RFIDs [37], which is only the last step of the e-waste chain. Possibilities among waste prevention, reuse, recycle, energy harvesting, and disposal are investigated to identify the best solution related to each type of RFID product, as well as cost/benefit analysis for the producer.