Chapter 11 - Life cycle assessment of e-waste management: current practices and future research agenda towards sustainability

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate the importance of multidisciplinary research in evaluating the sustainability performance of e-waste management and strategies for improving it through life cycle assessment (LCA) application. To achieve the chapter’s goal, the first section provides a summary of global e-waste generation, current research on e-waste toward sustainable e-waste management, and a brief introduction to current research in evaluating e-waste management performance. This section is followed by the chapter’s goal and motivation. Following that, this chapter provides a general overview of LCA as an environmental assessment tool and its transition to sustainability assessment, followed by a section on LCA application in e-waste management. Finally, this chapter discusses and recommends the future multidisciplinary research need and agenda. This chapter is important for a variety of stakeholders, including students, LCA practitioners, e-waste management practitioners, and decision-makers, because it provides a general overview of the performance evaluation of sustainable e-waste management through the application of LCA and highlights the current transition of LCA towards a sustainability tool. The final section discusses and recommends future multidisciplinary research needs and agendas.