Towards the development of an indicator system for environmental risk assessment of electronic waste : A preliminary study focusing on mobile phones

• Main Author: Wang, Tianyi
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Högskolan i Halmstad, Akademin för ekonomi, teknik och naturvetenskap 2017
• Subjects: waste mobile phones; indicators; indicator system; pollution; Environmental Sciences; Miljövetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-34765

Nowadays, large quantities of waste mobile phones are generated each year due to the large consumption and fast updating speed of this electronic product. This has become a rapidly growing pollution problem as mobile phones contain many harmful substances and these substances will be released to the environment if waste mobile phones are treated improperly. Therefore, it is necessary to develop risk assessment methods to determine the contamination degree of this waste to the environment and then take effective measures to reduce the pollution. Considering the complexity of risk assessment procedure, an indicator system for waste mobile phones is here established instead, consisting of totally 30 indicators. The system is developed as a hierarchy structure and has four layers including object layer, factor layer, indicator layer and sub-indicator layer.