Study Of Weee Recycle And Disposal Modes Under EPR

With the development of economy and technology along with industrialization progress, various material and spiritual requirement are satisfied along with the emerging of excessive consumption of resources and environmental pollution. Particularly, in the electrical and electronic industry, the short update cycle of the products accelerated the replacement process of End-of-Life (EOL) products, leading to a dramatic increase in Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). There is growing social consensus that appropriate disposal of these waste products is imperative. Also, reasonable and effective implementation of the WEEE recycling regulations based on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is of vital significance for recycling and remanufacturing WEEE, improving resource utilization, developing circular economy, founding environment-friendly society, and practicing sustainable development strategy. Since the waste appliances industry arrives at the peak period while the reverse remanufacturing industry keeps staying in its infancy at present with immature infrastructures and recycling systems. Game theory and related optimization theory are applied to investigate the decision-makings of reverse supply chain under EPR regulations accounting for consumer preference and marketing competition, aiming to provide suggestions of recycling and disposing WEEE for channel members and recommendations for government in policy making relating to supply chain supervision and coordination. The main research contents and conclusions are summarized as follows.(1) Based on the prerequisites that the recycler acts as the core member in the reverse supply chain which is affected by consumer preference and manufacture differences, Stackelberg game models are formulated in discussing commissioned recycling and recycling by manufacture themselves. Different decision-makings of channel members are studied as well as the affects of products substitution rate on channel strategy. By comparing all equilibrium solutions, there are inconsistent of mode preferences of supply chain members under different situations, while the individual recycling mode is the optimal choice for the manufacture.(2) In terms of the WEEE recycling modes undertaken by the manufacture, further analysis of decision-making strategies under individual and collective responsibility are conducted respectively by building revenue models of channel members. Taking consumer preference and ratio of average recovery cost under collective recycling modes into account, the DfE (Design of Environment) choices of different manufactures are evaluated. Numerical analysis is also applied to analyze how decision variables affect supply chain members’strategy preferences. The results indicate that DfE choices of manufactures under individual responsibility are always superior to those under collective responsibility. While free-riding could occur under collective recycling, which seriously dampen the investment enthusiasm of DfE practice, leading to inefficient operations of recycling implementations.