Improvement potential of today’s WEEE recycling performance: The case of LCD TVs in Belgium

Highlights

A methodology to assess WEEE recycling performance is presented.

MFA and Economic and Environmental evaluations are performed for LCD TVs in Belgium.

Ferrous metals and aluminium have high recycling rates.

Recycling of precious metals and plastics can improve substantially.

Abstract

Waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) constitutes one of the most relevant waste streams because of the quantity and presence of valuable materials. However, there is limited knowledge on the resource potential of urban mining WEEE, as data on material composition, and the efficiency of current recycling treatments are still scarce. In this article, an evaluation of the recycling performance at a national level for one of the fastest growing e-waste streams: LCD TVs is carried out through the following four steps. Firstly, material characterisation is performed by means of sampling of the waste stream. Secondly, a material flow analysis is conducted by evaluating the separation performance of a recycling plant in Belgium. Thirdly, the recovered economic value and avoided environmental impact (EI) of the analysed recycling system is assessed. Finally, the potential of urban mining for Belgium is forecasted. The analysis shows that while recycling performance for ferrous metals and aluminium are relatively high; there is substantial room to better close the material loops for precious metals (PM) and plastics. PMs and plastics account for 66 % of the economic value in LCD TVs and 57% of the EI. With the current, commonly applied recycling technology only one-third of the PM and housing plastics are recycled; meaning that for these materials, at a national level for Belgium, there is a potential for improvement that represents 3.3 million euros in 2016 and 6.8 million euros in 2025.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Recycling / Waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) / Material flow analysis / LCD TVs / Precious metals / Plastics

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge SENESCYT for partially funding this research and Apparec for their cooperation for data collection within the PRIME project.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11783-017-1000-0 and is accessible for authorized users.

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