Recycling and Waste Management Techniques

Electronic waste — discarded computers, phones, and other consumer devices — is one of the fastest-growing solid waste streams on the planet, generating tens of millions of tonnes each year and releasing toxic substances such as lead, mercury, and brominated flame retardants into soil, water, and air when handled carelessly. Researchers in this area study how metals like gold, copper, and rare earth elements can be recovered efficiently from circuit boards and components, reducing both environmental harm and the demand for virgin mining. A central tension driving current work is that informal recycling sectors in lower-income countries process the majority of global e-waste cheaply but at serious cost to worker and community health, while formal industrial methods remain expensive and underutilized. Open questions include how to design legislation that closes the gap between formal and informal systems, how to engineer "design for disassembly" into products from the outset, and how to accurately track the transboundary flows of discarded electronics that complicate any coordinated global response.

Works

105,309

Total citations

780,351

Keywords

E-WasteRecyclingEnvironmental ImpactsMetal RecoveryWaste ManagementHazardous Substances