Abstract
The unprecedented technological development and economic growth over the past two decades has resulted in streams of rapidly growing electronic waste (e-waste) around the world. As the potential source of secondary raw materials including precious and critical materials, e-waste has recently gained significant attention across the board, ranging from governments and industry, to academia and civil society organizations. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the last decade of e-waste literature followed by an in-depth analysis of the application of material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA), i.e., two less commonly used strategic tools to guide the relevant stakeholders in efficient management of e-waste. Through a keyword search on two main online search databases, Scopus and Web of Science, 1835 peer-reviewed publications were selected and subjected to a bibliographic network analysis to identify and visualize major research themes across the selected literature. The selected 1835 studies were classified into ten different categories based on research area, such as environmental and human health impacts, recycling and recovery technologies, associated social aspects, etc. With this selected literature in mind, the review process revealed the two least explored research areas over the past decade: MFA and LCA with 33 and 31 studies, respectively. A further in-depth analysis was conducted for these two areas regarding their application to various systems with numerous scopes and different stages of e-waste life cycle. The study provides a detailed discussion regarding their applicability, and highlights challenges and opportunities for further research.
Highlights
Electronic waste (e-waste) is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world, making its management one of the greatest challenges we are facing today
Evaluation of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) treatment systems or resource recovery methods was the most The current review identified two previous literature review articles which analyzed researched area in WEEE-related life cycle assessment (LCA) studies according to the findings from the present
This study explored potential benefits of preparing for reuse (PfR) compared to other waste management options for four white goods and four small electric devices (PC, printer, monitor, and laptop) using LCA in which the system boundary extended from preprocessing of the old product to the reuse of the new/second product
Summary
Electronic waste (e-waste) is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world, making its management one of the greatest challenges we are facing today. Various authors have asserted that lack of reliable data on e-waste generation and incomplete knowledge on the material flows after end-of-life are major challenges for better management and material recovery from e-waste [1,4,5]. This systematic literature review provides a comprehensive overview of e-waste literature from 2010 to 2020 with the aim of understanding the applicability of strategic tools, such as material flow analysis (MFA), in e-waste research. This paper will first provide a brief background on e-waste, followed by the literature review methodology, results and discussion, and conclusions
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