Life cycle assessment of WEEE plastic recycling

Abstract

Treatment of Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) creates the opportunities to reach the circular economy. Nevertheless, the WEEE plastic generation and the treatment of this huge waste stream has not been applied successfully. Thus, to reach the circular economy, managing the WEEE stream in a sustainable way is required. This plays an important role in the treatment of the huge amount of valuable resources and materials. In terms of plastics, the share of this material in the structure of the WEEE stream is approximately 20 percent. Thus, considering the plastic recycling from WEEE stream is vital. Nevetherless, the WEEE plastic streams carries out hazardous elements like brominated flame retardant (BFRs) and it is important to recognize the BFRs among the different polymers and eliminate them. The vision of this study is to aid the Finnish industry to become a leader in the treatment of challenging stream of the WEEE plastic and via the development of their strategies, change this challenge to novel business opportunities of the plastic in Finland. This study analyzes the environmental performance of WEEE plastics recycling technologies via life cycle assessment (LCA) method to get to know the best option to apply in the industry. Based on the results obtained from this study, material recovery through mechanical recycling is the best treatment of WEEE plastic recycling. For WEEE plastic recycling, as it obtained from the results of this study, the worst treatment is incineration. The highest GWP is incineration (scenario I) with 1530 kg CO2 eq./ tonne of WEEE plastics, and the second highest GWP is pyrolysis (scenario IV) with 297 kg CO2 eq./ tonne of WEEE plastics. And scenario II and III that stand for composite (Mechanical recycling I) with 1260 kg CO2 eq./ tonne of WEEE plastics and granules (Mechanical recycling II) with -940 kg CO2 eq./ tonne of WEEE plastics respectively, have the negative impact on GWP. These negative values show the saving regarding the environmental loads.