Assessing the Recycling Efficiency of Resource in E-Waste Based on MFA of Reverse Logistics System

The waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE, e-waste) has caused many issues, such as waste of resource and environmental pollution. This paper applied material flow analysis (MFA) method to analyze the flows of recycled resource from WEEE and process of reverse logistics from recycling to reuse. And analyzed the discarded TV data in K company (a leading television producer in China), and calculated the recycling efficiency of metals. The research showed that recycling efficiency of the metals from discarded TV in K company is 12.3%, which is far below the criterion (In Japan, the “Household appliance recycling and reuse” recycling efficiency of useful resource from discarded television by the television manufacturers must be above 55%). At last, we gave some suggestions for developing recycling efficiency of manufacturing enterprises and recovery enterprises in China: (1) Improving the recycling efficiency of manufacturer, retailer and consumer can contribute to improve the recycling efficiency in the whole reverse logistics system; (2) Improving the technological level of decomposition and dismantling of e-waste in the recycling process can increase the recycled material; (3) Manufacturing enterprises should have the green production concept and the participants in the supply chain should follow the concept of EPR (Extended Product Responsibility).