10 07 29 Master thesis Juliana Leon - e-Waste. This guide

Figure 5: Lifecycle of an electronic device with emphasis on the end-of-life phase.
Although the aim is to analyse the e-waste treatment in Colombia, this study limits its
investigations to computers only as a tracer item for the different types of e-waste
that could be encountered. Computers were chosen due to the greater data
availability in this sector and also because they represent a challenging item to
recycle, as they are composed of a multitude of different components, some of them
toxic and/or valuable. Furthermore, because of their valuable materials and parts,
computers seem to appear more recurrently in the informal sector than other types of
e-waste.
The system studied includes the whole computer waste treatment chain in Colombia
beginning when users discard computers and ending with the final disposal or
recycling of the different constitutive elements. The reference year for the MFA is
2009.
2.3.3 Goods and Materials
In this study, materials are differentiated in two levels. Goods (or level one materials)
are CPUs, laptops, CRT-monitors, and LCD-monitors. These goods are broken down
into level two materials not only ferrous metals, plastics, and copper, but also PWBs,
CRT glass, and LCD screen modules. The compositions of each good regarding
level two materials are shown in Table 7.
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