Electronic Waste

11Life Cycle Assessment of e-Waste – Waste Cellphone Recycling

Pengwei He^1,2, Haibo Feng², Gyan Chhipi-Shrestha², Kasun Hewage², and Rehan Sadiq²

¹Central South University, School of Business, 932 Lushan S Rd, Yuelu District, Changsha, Hunan 410083, People’s Republic of China

²University of British Columbia, School of Engineering, 3333 University Way, Okanagan, Kelowna, BC, V1V 1V7, Canada

11.1 Introduction

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an international standardized methodological framework defined in the ISO 14040 series, mainly consisting of four phases: (i) the definition of goal and scope, (ii) life cycle inventory (LCI), (iii) life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), and (iv) life cycle interpretation (Ismail and Hanafiah 2019). Generally, LCA is developed to evaluate the environmental impact of products and the entire process in their life cycle. Typically, LCA is used to assess products’ potential environmental impact, from the extraction of raw materials to production, the use phase of the products, and until their final disposal (Luo et al. 2018). However, LCA also has many other application aspects. One obvious example is that it has been utilized to evaluate a specific product’s life cycle. Some LCA studies have focused on a specific product’s production stage and during its end-of-life stage, while other LCA studies merely focused on waste management (Ismail and Hanafiah 2019).

LCA is an ideal tool to evaluate waste management’s environmental impact and investigate ...