Trans-Regional Flow Of Waste Mobile Phones And Its Impact On Environmental Benefits Of Recycling In China

The rapid development of Information and Communication Technology(ICT),as well as the growing spending power have resulted in fast growth in the consumption of electronic products.Retired mobile phone is a kind of small-size WEEE with the largest amount,contains both high-value recyclable materials and toxic substances.It is estimated that China produces nearly 700 million units retired mobile phones each year,and will grow to 937 million units by 2025.However,factors such as inconvenient collection patterns,incomplete collection channels,insufficient economic incentives,lacking of recycling awareness,as well as the privacy security limit the collection rate of retired mobile phones.Most of the retired mobile phones are stored at home,only a small part of them entered the collection system.In order to explore the trans-regional flow of waste mobile phones and divert them into the formal sector to achieve full life cycle management,the following scientific issues are conducted in this study.1)In order to find out the effective measures and deficiencies of the waste mobile phones management in China,this paper comparatively analyzed the management laws and regulations,collection system,treatment technologies of waste mobile phones at home and abroad.At present,there lacks management policies in China and existing many responsibility-dispersed-stakeholders in the market.Comparing with the developed countries,it still lacks the whole life cycle management system of waste mobile phones in China.2)This paper sorted out the estimation methods of e-waste,and selected the Carnegie Mellon model,market supply A model and sales & update method to the estimate the production of waste mobile phones in China.The estimated results based on the sales & update method show that the generation of waste mobile phones in China increased from 9.68 million to 148.76 million.East China produces the most waste mobile phones among all the regions,accounting for 32.27% the amount of waste mobile phones in China.Northwest produces the least amount of waste mobile phones,accounting for 6.71%.The amounts of waste mobile phones in other regions are relatively close.Through market research,the recycling value of waste mobile phone is estimated.The results show that the recycling value of a waste mobile phone is 3.70 yuan,and the total resource value of waste mobile phones in 2017 is 550 million yuan.The recycling value of circuit board components is the highest,accounting for 47% of the whole parts.The recycling value of gold is the highest among all the materials,accounting for 40%.3)In this study,we estimated the generation of waste mobile phone at a provincial level in China.We further investigated the disassembly capacity of waste mobile phones,and simulated the interprovincial flows of waste mobile phones under the current disassembly capacity by using the Minimum Distance Maximum Receiving(MDMR)algorithm.Then,by adjusting the regional distribution of the disassembly capacity of waste mobile phones,we analyzed the changes in the interprovincial flow characteristics of waste mobile phones under different scenarios.The results show that the annually domestic generation of waste mobile phones entering the recycling system is 148.76 million and the disassembly capacity of certified plants is 412.85 million.The generation and disassembly capacity are unevenly distributed among provinces.Guangdong,Shandong and Jiangsu are the top three generators of waste mobile phones,while Anhui,Sichuan and Guangdong are the top three receivers of those disassembly provinces.The maximum flow is from Shandong to Anhui,which is 11.27 million,accounting for 7.58% of the nation generation,while the minimum flow is from Tibet to Sichuan,which is 0.3 million,accounting for 0.2% of the nation generation.The results show that the current distribution of disassembly capacity in each province needs to be further optimized.It is suggested to adjust the disassembly capacity according to the distribution of waste mobile phones in each geographical region of China.To be specific,the disassembly capacity of Northeast China and North China should be increased.Meanwhile,the disassembly capacity of East China and South China can be appropriately reduced.Such an optimization scheme can not only reduce the distance of interprovincial movements,but also balance the occupancy ratio of disassembly capacity in each geographical region,and meet the increasing disassembly demand in the coming years.4)This paper defined the effective transport range and quantization method of the trans-regional transport process,and a life cycle method was carried out to assess the environmental impacts of waste mobile phones in recycling process and trans-regional transport process.The results show that the two typical recycling processes are all shown as environmental benefits;the recycled materials and reused parts are the main sources of the environment benefits;and the effective transport range of two processes are 0~3094km and 0~1248km.It was found that increasing the proportion of railway transport and reducing the empty return rate of truck transport can effectively expand the transport range.Based on the idea of life cycle management,this paper improved the basic data of the whole life cycle process of waste mobile phones in China.Firstly,we analyzed the regional distribution of waste mobile phones in China and the disassembly capacity of the disassembling plants.Then,we set the MDMR model to simulate the interprovincial movements of waste mobile phones in China.Finally,a life cycle method was carried out to quantify the effective transport range of the interprovincial movements of waste mobile phones.This research have a certain scientific value and practical significance to promote the sustainable management of waste mobile phones.