Characterizing architectural options for electronic waste recycling systems

Several electronic waste recycling systems now exist worldwide in many different forms. In order to determine the optimal system structure for a location, a methodology for comparison must be established. This paper outlines a framework developed to compare the environmental and economic performance of recycling systems through analysis of both context and system architecture options. An overview of the available architectural options for designing an e-waste system is presented, and then the comparison framework is applied to an analysis of systems operating in Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the US States of California, Maine and Maryland. The analysis presented here focuses on the quantity of e-waste collected by each system. The results of applying this framework to a collection analysis show that while all systems examined appear to still be increasing their mass collected per capita each year, the mass collected per electronic item at end of life may have reached a plateau in the older systems. Furthermore, as a predictor of mass of e-waste collected per capita, the number of collection points available may be significant; however it is not readily apparent whether the number of collection points per capita or per unit area is more significant, nor why some systems appear to be outliers of the otherwise apparent trends.