A Methodology to Estimate Benefits from WEEE Recycling, Ecodom Case Study

WEEE is Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment and its proper treatment is one of the challenges Europe is facing, because of economically essential materials recovery and of proper treatment of environmentally critical components they contain (CFC, PCB, lead). Ecodom has developed the methodology presented here, which covers all the phases of the WEEE recycling system, and considers the impacts in term of energy used (GJ) and of equivalent CO2 emissions caused. The considered system starts from waste generation, when users decide to dispose of electrical and electronic equipment, and it ends with the recycling or final disposal of the components obtained through WEEE treatment. The information used for the computation come from Ecodom activity (data come from business data-mining operations); for what concerns the coefficients (for instance Italian electrical mix), they come from literature (for instance, database Ecoinvent or information from Transportation Ministry). The novelty of this approach stands in evaluating environmental benefits through the comparison with a scenario in which Ecodom does not exist and WEEE is managed by other individuals (Scenario B).