Abstract
Efficient electronic waste (e-waste) management is one of the vital strategies to save materials, including critical minerals and precious metals with limited global reserves. The e-waste collection issue has gained increasing attention in recent years, especially in developing countries, due to low collection rates. This study aims to search for progressive solutions in the e-waste collection sphere with close-to-zero transport and infrastructure costs and the minimization of consumers’ efforts towards an enhanced e-waste management efficiency and collection rate. Along these lines, the present paper develops a smart reverse system of e-waste from end-of-life electronics holders to local recycling infrastructures based on intelligent information technology (IT) tools involving local delivery services to collect e-waste and connecting with interactive online maps of users’ requests. This system considers the vehicles of local delivery services as potential mobile collection points that collect and deliver e-waste to a local recycling enterprise with a minimum deviation from the planned routes. Besides e-waste transport and infrastructure costs minimization, the proposed smart e-waste reverse system supports the reduction of CO2 through the optimal deployment of e-waste collection vehicles. The present study also advances a solid rationale for involving local e-waste operators as key stakeholders of the smart e-waste reverse system. Deploying the business model canvas (BMC) toolkit, a business model of the developed system has been built for the case of Sumy city, Ukraine, and discussed in light of recent studies.
Highlights
It is difficult to imagine modern life without electrical and electronic devices—household appliances, information technology (IT) equipment, and means of communication that are continually being improved
We can argue that the vehicles of any local delivery service company or appropriate service division at trading enterprises can be considered as potential mobile collection points which, without a significant deviation from the planned routes, could collect and deliver EoL or obsolete electronic equipment (EEE) to the local specialized e-waste processing enterprise
The structural and logical scheme of a smart e-waste reverse system based on involving local delivery services and using interactive online maps is presented in the Figure 1
Summary
It is difficult to imagine modern life without electrical and electronic devices—household appliances, information technology (IT) equipment, and means of communication that are continually being improved. With the development of increasingly advanced technologies, new opportunities and areas for the use of electronic tools appear, which leads to the appearance of new products and, as a result, their diversity is even more significant [1]. E-waste accounts for only 1–3% of solid household waste, it is among the most hazardous consumption wastes [4,5]. They contain more than 1000 different substances, representing up to 60 elements from the periodic table [6], many of which are toxic, elements such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium. Waste electrical and electronic products contain precious metals, including gold, silver, copper, platinum, and palladium, having an important ecological and economic cost [9,10,11]
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