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102 Substance flow analysis of the recycling of small WEEE 6.1.2. Collection In Germany, legislative requirements provide the main motivation for collection, reuse and treatment of WEEE. The current collection target of 4 kg per year and capita does not set incentives to increase the collection of WEEE, because this collection target was already achieved in Germany in 2000 (long before the implementation of the ElektroG), where 476 000 tonnes of electronic waste appliances were collected (BMU 2007). Moreover, the collection target is not differentiated according to the equipment types, so that it does not promote the collection of small and light devices, but the collection of heavy appliances (Rotter et al. 2006). However, the regulations define how collection should be performed and who is responsible for financing the operations, so that collection systems are in place for all types of waste equipment including the small ones. In the USA, where little legislation regulates the recycling of WEEE, collection and treatment are mainly driven by the economy and by voluntary environmental protection for equipment types with a high hazardous potential, like CRT monitors. If maximising the revenues from the production of secondary raw materials is the primary focus, mainly very high-grade equipment like mobile phones and personal computers are collected for treatment or reuse. Because there is little motivation to collect low-grade equipment, the collection rate for this equipment group is almost zero. In this sense, the different legislative frameworks explain the higher collection rates in Germany than in the USA. Regarding non-separated collection of sWEEE, a clear correlation between average size of the WEEE and percentage of end-of-life devices disposed of by the last user was identified, as illustrated for Germany in Figure 32. To estimate the average size of the devices, quantified as the diagonal length, the data of the database described in chapter 3.3.1 were used. The smaller the device, the more likely it is to be disposed of by the last user. The economic value of the device also plays a role in the discard behaviour of the user, as well as other factors like the emotional value, or the identification of the user with the device that is not only used for its function but primarily as a “life-style companion”. Low-grade equipment is more likely to be disposed of than large high-grade equipment (Figure 32).
6. Discussion of the results of the SFA 103 Percentage of WEEE disposed of 90% 80% 70% 60% Mobile phones Desktop personal computer CRT monitor Large high-grade equipment Small high-grade equipment Low-grade equipment 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 0 20 40 60 80 100 Average diagonal length (cm) Figure 32 Correlation between the percentage of WEEE disposed of and the average diagonal length of the devices in Germany 6.1.3. Treatment and reuse The recovery rates for precious metals depend both on the characteristics of the input and on the technology used (see chapter 4.1.4.2). The mass-oriented recovery targets defined by the WEEE Directive set incentives to apply processes that allow the recovery of the most mass-relevant materials, for instance ferrous metals and plastics. The precious metals contained in trace concentrations in the materials sent to recovery processes for plastics and ferrous metals are usually not recovered (Paper 2), so that the loss of trace metals is a tradeoff for the maximisation of the recovery of mass-relevant materials. As shown in Paper 2 and by Schill (2007), the recovery targets of the WEEE Directive establish no incentive for the recovery of precious metals. In the USA, the main impulse for managing sWEEE is economic, so that the processes are optimised to recover the most economically valuable materials, which, for high-grade equipment, include precious metals. Manual processes at industrial scale are traditionally more common in the USA than in Germany. Therefore, the obligation to achieve mass-oriented recovery targets besides the necessity to maximize the economic revenues partially explains why higher recovery rates for precious metals are achieved by the pre-processing technologies applied in the USA compared to Germany (see chapter 4.1.4.2). Figure 33 illustrates that there is a weak correlation between gold concentration in the WEEE and recovery rates achieved by the processes of the formal sector in Germany. However, the treatment technologies currently applied do not set a clear
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Kurzfassung Die Nachfrage nach Edel
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Page 127 and 128: References 127 Binder 2007 BITKOM 2
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