An in-depth literature review of the waste electrical and electronic equipment context: Trends and evolution

Abstract

The consumption of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) is continuously increasing worldwide and, consequently, so is the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) it generates at its end-of-life. In parallel to this growth, legislation related to this issue has been passed in different countries with the aim of improving the management of WEEE. In order to raise awareness about the situation in which the generation, composition, management or final treatment of this kind of waste currently finds itself, an extensive number of articles have been published around the world. The aim of this paper is to define and analyse the main areas of research on WEEE by offering a broader analysis of the relevant literature in this field published between 1992 and August 2014. The literature researched comprises 307 articles, which are analysed according to the topic they focus on (WEEE management, WEEE generation, WEEE characterisation, social aspects of WEEE, re-use of EEE or economic aspects of WEEE). In addition, a deeper analysis is also presented, which takes into account the temporal evolution (globally and by topic), location of the study, categories and subcategories analysed, etc.