Operational sustainability metrics - assessing performance of electronics recycling systems

Despite growing concern about the handling of end-of-life electronics, the existing electronics recycling system has not been characterized in detail, either by the fate of the materials recovered or the economic and environmental performance of the system. There is a need for systematic ways to describe system functioning and quantitative methods to assess system performance. Existing evaluations of eco-efficiency or sustainability are either too aggregated to guide operational decisions or too complex and data intensive to be performed in the context of a low-margin system. A range of performance metrics were assessed for several electronics recycling operators. These metrics were assessed for their ability to provide insights on resource efficiency comparable to more complex indicators, with minimal data required beyond that collected for normal business operations. Value recovery effectiveness results for three US electronic recycling operators are presented, based on several quantitative indicators. Results show that current simple measures such as "mass percent to landfill" are not sufficient to fully assess system performance.