Life-Cycle Assessment of Metal Recovery from Electronic Waste

Abstract

Increasing technological development is driving the demand for metals, especially in the field of electronics. Conversely, electronic waste is a growing global waste stream which is becoming more problematic in its management. Unsafe disposal contributes to environmental pollution as well as wasting secondary resources and threatening human health, particularly in developing countries with immature waste treatment and recycling technologies. This chapter gives an outline of European regulations and an overview of the global electronic waste situation and formal and informal recycling in the developed and developing countries. Since metal concentrations in electronicwaste can be even higher than inmineral ores and somemetals are considered critical in supply, there is a strong incentive to recover them as a secondary resource. Life-cycle assessment, LCA, is an analytical tool based on physical metrics of material and energy flows of the life-cycle of a product or service system used to evaluate its environmental performance. The recovery of valuable metals from electronic waste can be achieved by bioleaching, involving microorganisms working at near ambient temperatures. The possible environmental performance from a life-cycle perspective of this novel metal recovery technique is evaluated in a summarised illustrative case study applying life-cycle assessment.