The QWERTY/EE concept, Quantifying Recyclability and Eco-Efficiency for End-of-Life Treatment of Consumer Electronic Products

The QWERTY/EE concept addresses recyclability and eco-efficiency of take-back and recycling of consumer electronic products, a topic currently receiving large international attention. Through the environmental part of the concept an alternative for usual weight based recycling percentages is presented. In addition, economic effects of take-back and recycling are included in a quantitative eco-efficiency approach for evaluating technological, design and policy strategies. The approach itself and the valuable insights in recycling of consumer electronic products are highly interesting for policy makers, legislators, product designers, manufacturers, recyclers, take-back system operators and scientists. The concept is applied on a large number of products and scenarios, based on extensive environmental and economic modeling of end-of-life processing. The results show how to set priorities to enhance end-of-life performance by properly aligning policy making, system operation, technology and Design for End-of-Life. From this perspective, the recently enacted European Directives on electronic waste, WEEE, and hazardous substances, RoHS, are reviewed, indicating substantial room for improvement and showing practical directions for future eco-efficient development of take-back and recycling of electronic products.

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