电子垃圾,包括来自过时电子设备的废弃材料,通常最终与城市固体废物混合,通过掩埋和焚烧导致处置不当。这种处理不当会将有害物质释放到水中,土壤,和空气,对生态系统和人类健康构成重大风险,最终进入食物链和供水。正式的电子垃圾回收,以循环经济模型和零排放原则为指导,为这一关键挑战提供了潜在的解决方案。然而,由于化学和能源消耗,对电子废物管理实施循环经济可能会对环境造成影响。因此,先进的可持续性评估工具,如生命周期评估(LCA),已用于研究电子废物管理策略。虽然LCA是一种标准化的方法,研究人员采用了各种途径对不同的电子废物管理方法进行环境评估。然而,根据作者的知识,缺乏针对LCA研究的全面研究,以辨别这种方法在正式电子废物管理策略中的机会和局限性。因此,这篇综述旨在调查现有关于循环经济下电子废物管理的生命周期评价的文献,揭示了研究的现状,确定研究差距,并提出了未来的研究方向。它首先解释了在循环经济中管理电子废物的各种方法。然后,本审查评估并审查了实施循环生物经济以进行电子废物管理的LCA方法。最后,它提出了框架和程序,以增强LCA方法在未来电子废物管理研究中的适用性。有关电子废物管理LCA的文献显示,在正式电子废物管理中实施LCA的差异很大,导致该领域的不同结果和发现。本文强调,LCA可以确定各种正式电子垃圾回收途径的环境热点,特别关注金属。它可以帮助解决这些问题,并在电子废物回收方面实现更大的可持续性,特别是在火法冶金和湿法冶金途径中。与其他金属相比,高价值金属的回收在环境上更为合理。然而,就环境研究而言,生物冶金途径仍然有限。尽管有可能将电子垃圾回收到塑料或玻璃中,该部门的LCA研究缺乏稳健的背景。本审查的结论是,LCA可以为电子废物管理的决策和政策过程提供有价值的见解,推广无害环境的电子废物回收做法。然而,LCA结果在电子废物回收中的准确性,由于数据要求,主体性,影响类别权重,和其他因素,仍然有争议,强调在这一领域需要更多的不确定性分析。
E-waste, encompassing discarded materials from outdated electronic equipment, often ends up intermixed with municipal solid waste, leading to improper disposal through burial and incineration. This improper handling releases hazardous substances into water, soil, and air, posing significant risks to ecosystems and human health, ultimately entering the food chain and water supply. Formal e-waste recycling, guided by circular economy models and zero-discharge principles, offers potential solutions to this critical challenge. However, implementing a circular economy for e-waste management due to chemical and energy consumption may cause environmental impacts. Consequently, advanced sustainability assessment tools, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), have been applied to investigate e-waste management strategies. While LCA is a standardized methodology, researchers have employed various routes for environmental assessment of different e-waste management methods. However, to the authors\' knowledge, there lacks a comprehensive study focusing on LCA studies to discern the opportunities and limitations of this method in formal e-waste management strategies. Hence, this
review aims to survey the existing literature on the LCA of e-waste management under a circular economy, shedding light on the current state of research, identifying research gaps, and proposing future research directions. It first explains various methods of managing e-waste in the circular economy. This
review then evaluates and scrutinizes the LCA approach in implementing the circular bioeconomy for e-waste management. Finally, it proposes frameworks and procedures to enhance the applicability of the LCA method to future e-waste management research. The literature on the LCA of e-waste management reveals a wide variation in implementing LCA in formal e-waste management, resulting in diverse results and findings in this field. This paper underscores that LCA can pinpoint the environmental hotspots for various pathways of formal e-waste recycling, particularly focusing on metals. It can help address these concerns and achieve greater sustainability in e-waste recycling, especially in pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical pathways. The recovery of high-value metals is more environmentally justified compared to other metals. However, biometallurgical pathways remain limited in terms of environmental studies. Despite the potential for recycling e-waste into plastic or glass, there is a dearth of robust background in LCA studies within this sector. This
review concludes that LCA can offer valuable insights for decision-making and policy processes on e-waste management, promoting environmentally sound e-waste recycling practices. However, the accuracy of LCA results in e-waste recycling, owing to data requirements, subjectivity, impact category weighting, and other factors, remains debatable, emphasizing the need for more uncertainty analysis in this field.