End-of-Life Treatment Strategies for Flat Screen Televisions: A Case Study

摘要

The European recycling directive increases the pressure to improve the recycling processes for the rapidly increasing number of End-of-Life (EoL) flat screen televisions. Based on a case study an estimation of the expected economic and environmental benefits of the availability of product information for different EoL treatment strategies is provided. This case study demonstrates that pre-processing operations, such as dismantling, product sorting and clustering, allow to increase the economic viability and sustainability of recycling flat screen televisions. One of the main challenges for implementing pre-processing operations in an industrial setting is that these operations require the ability of product identification and specific product information, such as product structure and material composition. To allow such an exchange of key information, a holistic life cycle approach is required, in which all different actors in the lifecycle are involved, as is achieved in the Flemish PRIME project.