Recycling of WEEEs: An economic assessment of present and future e-waste streams

Abstract

Waste from Electric and Electronic Equipments (WEEEs) is currently considered to be one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world, with an estimated growth rate going from 3% up to 5% per year. The recycling of Electric or electronic waste (E-waste) products could allow the diminishing use of virgin resources in manufacturing and, consequently, it could contribute in reducing the environmental pollution. Given that EU is trying, since the last two decades, to develop a circular economy based on the exploitation of resources recovered by wastes, a comprehensive framework supporting the decision-making process of multi-WEEE recycling centres will be analysed in thispaper. An economic assessment will define the potential revenues coming from the recovery of fourteen14 e-products (e.g. LCD notebooks, LED notebooks, CRT TVs, LCD TVs, LED TVs, CRT monitors, LCD monitors, LED monitors, cell phones, smart phones, PV panels, HDDs, SSDs and tablets) on the base of current and future disposed volumes in Europe. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis will be used to test the impact of some critical variables (e.g. price of recovered materials, input materials composition, degree of purity obtained by the recycling process, volumes generated, and percentage of collected waste) on specific economic indexes. A discussion of the economic assessment results shows the main challenges in the recycling sector and streamlines some concrete solutions.

E-Waste Supply Chain in Mexico: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Management

“…In fact, waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) growing rates are usually three times faster than urban waste, and the WEEE increase rate, globally, is estimated between 3% and 5% [1,2].…”

The Link between e-Waste and GDP—New Insights from Data from the Pan-European Region

“…WEEE contains both hazardous and precious components, and is a rapidly growing waste stream [3][4][5]. The responsible collection and recycling of WEEE reduces environmental harm [6,7] and facilitates the recovery of valuable materials [8][9][10], including rare earth elements and other critical raw materials (e.g., indium and gallium) that are of vital importance for modern economies [11][12][13][14]. The recycling of WEEE is a complex task requiring an effective technical infrastructure and managerial framework [15,16], and it has potential to generate significant economic wealth from recovered rare and important metals [12,17,18].…”

“…The responsible collection and recycling of WEEE reduces environmental harm [6,7] and facilitates the recovery of valuable materials [8][9][10], including rare earth elements and other critical raw materials (e.g., indium and gallium) that are of vital importance for modern economies [11][12][13][14]. The recycling of WEEE is a complex task requiring an effective technical infrastructure and managerial framework [15,16], and it has potential to generate significant economic wealth from recovered rare and important metals [12,17,18]. By way of example, the economic potential for recycling waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) from WEEE collected from EU households alone, was estimated to be 3-6 thousand million EUR (profitability as net present value) for 2030 [19].…”

Waste glass from end-of-life fluorescent lamps as raw material in geopolymers

“…Wastes from Electric and Electronic Equipment (e waste) are one of the priority waste streams of EU policy, with an estimated growth of 3 5%/year (Cucchiella et al, 2015). End of life fluores cent lamps belong to this e waste category, and the worldwide annual production is projected to be of the order of 1.5 billion units (Wagner, 2011).…”