SUbstance flow analysis of the recycling of small waste electrical ...

4. Data inventory 75
was applied to sort the WEEE out of the residual waste and feed this to a treatment facility
for WEEE, so that the gold and palladium contained in sWEEE disposed of together with
residual waste are assumed to be discarded.
4.1.3. Reuse
Because reuse of EEE is covered by this investigation, “only” data on reuse of WEEE are
needed. Defining a clear boundary between reuse of WEEE and reuse of EEE in practice is
a challenge, as emphasized by Prelle (2008).
Data on reuse of WEEE in Germany in 2007 under the responsibility of the manufacturers
were published by BMU (2008), and this is summarized by Table 23.
Table 23
Quantity of WEEE reused under the responsibility of the manufacturers in Germany in
2007 (tonnes)
Category according to WEEE Directive Reused
2- Small household appliances 662
3- IT and telecommunications equipment 2705
4- Consumer equipment 343
6- Electrical and electronic tools 181
7- Toys, leisure and sports equipment 25
Little information is available about the reuse of sWEEE in Germany besides the data from
BMU (2008). Greener Solutions (2008) reported that mobile phones they collected in 2007
were reused in Asia or Africa.
The reuse rates depend not only on the collection channel, but also on the equipment types.
It was assumed that the reuse rates are higher for sWEEE collected by the informal sector
than for sWEEE collected through the ElektroG. For Germany, the following assumptions
were used to quantify the flows to reuse:
50% of the sWEEE collected by the informal sector and by ‘others’ is sent for reuse;
50% of the end-of-life mobile phones collected by the producers is sent for reuse;
5% of the end-of-life personal computers and 2% of the large high-grade equipment
collected by the municipalities is sent for reuse;
1% of the sWEEE belonging to the other three equipment groups collected by the
municipalities is sent for reuse.
Table 24 summarizes the results. They include the parts of sWEEE sorted out for reuse
before or during treatment (this flow of reused parts of sWEEE is assumed to be very small).
The orders of magnitude of the data of Table 24 match the data reported by BMU (2008).