| In recent years, with the economic development and technological progress, the increasing penetration of mobile phones, have dramatically promoted the amount of waste mobile phones generated in China. Since2004, China has become the largest producer and seller of mobile phone in the world. As of2012, the global total of mobile phone users is about6.411billion, and would have been expected to reach6.835billion by the end of2013. Then the number of Chinese mobile phone users has reached1.229billion, a penetration rate of90.8per hundred people. Moreover, the service life of mobile phones in China is generally less than three years, due to the pursuit of fashion and the desire to acquire new mobile phone functions. There are approximately70million waste mobile phones being generated every year in China. United Nations Environment Environment Programme predicted that by2020, the annual amount of discarded mobile phones will be approximately seven times greater than the amount in2007. Compared with to traditional municipal wastes, obsolete mobile phones on the one hand contain a lot of lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and other toxic substances, if not handled properly, which can easily caused serious damage to the ecological environment and human health; on the other hand, there are many valuable materials that can be recovered, such as copper, silver, gold and palladium. Therefore, recycling of waste mobile phones is required to garner the double value of both environmental protection and resource conservation. Hence, the recycling processes of end-of-life mobile phones were analyzed quantitatively, to evaluate the impact of energy consumption and pollutant emissions on ecological environment and human health. And the research is important to the management and industrial development of small waste electrical and electronic equipment (s-WEEE) with mobile phones as a typical example, can provide the technical basis for policy-makers decisions. Based on the comparative analysis of management laws and regulations, collection system, treatment technologies and the typical recycling processes of waste mobile phone at home and abroad, the paper has conducted a series of life cycle assessment on3recycling processes of discarded mobile phones, to quantitative determine the environmental impact, and performed the risk identification and management, and then establish the appropriate environmental management systems.(1) After the sorting and summarizing of the status quo policy of management regulations and collection system at home and abroad, we found that current existence prpblems are less environmentally conscious of consumers, the formal spontaneous recycling activity without effective economic incentives, lack of collecting channels, and competitive illegal recycling. On the base of "The adjust focus of waste electrical and electronic products catalog (draft)", it has greatly significance to draw on the management experience from international organizations and advanced countries on abandoned mobile phones and other small electronic appliances products, in order to strengthen the management of discarded mobile phones and improve the efficiency of recycling. The improvement measures includes the aspects of management regulations, extended producer responsibility, collection system and environmental awareness, so as to improve our management of discarded mobile phones, and provide a theoretical basis for the management of discarded mobile phones and other small electronic waste.(2) This research analyzed the composition, the recycling principle of materials and components, and typical treatment process around the world. Integrating the competitive advantage of Chinese human labor, the proposed dismantling process of discarded mobile phones should mainly be modular artificial dismantling technologies, after reusing the whole or part of discarded celluar phone, and then mechanical disruption and separation. The last treatment process is recovery of valuable metals, such as copper, gold, silver, palladium, cobalt, iron, tin, magnesium, aluminum. Meanwhile plastic materials is reused after pulverized and post-injection compression for granulation. In summary, it is a environmental efficient tandem recycling process, suitable for waste mobile phone treatment in China. (3) Using GaBi6software and Eco-indicator99(H) model, the research has assessed the three kinds of waste mobile phone recycling scenarios. The results showed that all three recycling scenarios can bring environmental benefits, while the environmental benfits are-8.83E+02Pt (Scenario3),-8.06E+02Pt (Scenario2),-4.13E+02Pt (Scenario1), respectively. That is Scenario3> Scenario2>Scenario1. In the modular recycling processes of discarded mobile phones, the main environmental benefits are from valuable metals recycling of printed circuit board and lithium batteries, such as gold, silver, palladium, copper and cobalt and other metals. On the contrary, if those components could not be effectively handled, both of which would be the most serious hazards parts. Environmental impact categories which have more significant environmental benefits mainly are mineral resources, carcinogenic effects, ecotoxicity, respiratory(inorganic), climate change, fossil fuels and acidification/eutrophication. It could consequently concluded that those legal recycling processes can first recover a large amount of valuable materials to achieve the purpose of saving resources, and also reduce the adverse effects of discarded cell phones on ecological environment and human health, particularly carcinogenic effects of toxic and hazardous substances(e.g. heavy metals, brominated flame retardants) on human health, respiratory system damage of inorganic substances(e.g. dust, SOx and NOx) from the recycling processes.(4) For risk issues in the recycling process of waste mobile phone, It is feasible to construct environmental management system in terms of ISO14000environmental management system certification, environmental monitoring and record keeping of recycling process, emergency planning, occupational health and safety, financial assurance, training, etc., in order to reduce environmental risk in the recycling process of waste phone, and to build green, efficient and low-carbon industrial development model of waste mobile phone. |
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