In 2008, around 10 million tonnes of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) were put on the markets of the European Union member states. With some delay, the amounts of waste from these devices, the e-waste, has grown as well to the magnitude of around 10 million tonnes a year, and according to (Huisman 2008), the amount of EEE sold in the EU still grows with 2.5 % to 2.7 % every year. As a reaction, in order to environment-friendly collect and treat the e-waste, the (WEEE Directive 2003) was enacted in the EU in 2003. It extends the producers’ responsibility towards the end of life of their products and sets minimum targets for collection, recovery and recycling of e-waste. The EU member states transposed the WEEE Directive into their national legislations. The member states have certain freedoms in how they transpose and implement the provisions of the WEEE Directive so that each member state has individual e-waste legislation with the WEEE Directive as the common denominator. This report describes the German e-waste management system in the European context. It explains the key players and their roles, shows the performance of the system, and discusses the positive and negative experiences obtained during the five years operation of the German e-waste management system. Prior to the WEEE Directive, Germany collected and treated e-waste within the legislative and infrastructural framework for wastes. The public waste management authorities (PuWaMA) were responsible for the collection and treatment of e-waste, and consumers were charged for its treatment and disposal. The (ElektroG 2005), the German transposition of the (WEEE Directive 2003), shifted responsibilities to the producers. Since 2006, consumers can bring e-waste free of charge to the municipal collection points. The PuWaMA are further on responsible for collection. Their responsibility ends with the handover of the collected e-waste to the producers who organize and finance the logistics, treatment and disposal of this waste. Each producer putting EEE on the German market is responsible to take back the amounts of e-waste corresponding to his market share in the EEE put on the market (PoM). Producers establish takeback systems or otherwise organize the takeback of the e-waste. Different from most other EU member states, collective takeback systems are not common in Germany. Producers normally directly contract end-of-life service providers (ESPs) organizing the logistics, treatment and disposal of e-waste, for which each producer is responsible in accordance to his market share in PoM. The German e-waste management system exceeds the minimum collection, recovery and recycling targets stipulated in the (WEEE Directive 2003). Nevertheless, Germany collects less than 50 % of e-waste arising, and treatment operators complain about the quality of collection because of damaged e-waste hindering proper treatment. The collection of e-waste needs better financing mechanisms to increase the rates and quality of collection. Higher collection rates could also help reducing the illegal transboundary shipments of e-waste to developing countries, which are a persisting problem in Germany like in all other developed countries. The treatment operators are audited and certified annually by third party auditors in order to ensure they have adequate technology, knowhow and organization for a state-of-the-art treatment of e-waste. It is, however, difficult to prove whether treatment operators actually make use of their abilities in daily operation. Competition and cost pressure may compromise the treatment quality. Quality standards for the treatment of e-waste are therefore upcoming instruments to increase the transparency on the performance of treatment operators. The treatment of e-waste requires excellent expertise and experience. The treatment must be adapted to the type of e-waste processed in order to achieve an economically and environmentally good result. Due to the high labor cost in Germany and in most other European countries, the treatment is highly mechanized. Nevertheless, environment-friendly treatment of e-waste requires a mix of manual labor and high-tech processing of e-waste balancing the legislative and the economical requirements.