Our society has entered an era where information and communication, hitherto conveyed by means based on relatively renewable resources (paper, speech, etc.), now use ‘electronic’ media. From family computers to mobile phones and urban vending machines, electronics have invaded our daily lives. Due to the apparent lightness of manipulated information (no heavy paper media, no need for travel to be heard by speech), ICT conveys an image of absence of friction that gives them an image of “clean technology”. In fact, digital infrastructure is green. They increasingly consume energy, produce waste that is difficult to treat, and release toxic substances, which cannot be recovered. High tech is the final step in the division of labour, which implies that everything remains in place before. Far from being detached from heavy industry, the latter is a prerequisite for ICT to exist. The terminal is the tree that conceals the forest. The aim of this exploratory project is to start to shed light on the ecology of digital infrastructure, starting with waste management. According to the Agency for the Environment and Energy Management (ADEME), waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) accounted for 1,7 million tonnes in France in 2000. The growth rate of this waste would be between 3 % and 5 %. What do they become? Who deals with this? What are the sectors? What are the contributions and responsibilities of the various actors, businesses, local authorities, associations or consumers? The adoption and implementation of an EU WEEE Directive in August 2004 exacerbates the urgency of questioning the existing mechanisms for the management of WEEE and its future. This project is above all an exploratory approach aimed at producing as comprehensive a state of the art as possible on the issue and recommendations in terms of research projects (priority areas, possible cooperation, thesis, etc.). It is a state of the art from a scientific point of view, but also a study of what economists call the ‘sector’ in order to establish an initial basis for understanding the links between the various levels and the various aspects we have discussed.