Review article
Circular Economy in the WEEE industry: a systematic literature review and a research agenda

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2020.05.007Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Circular Economy literature in Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment is reviewed

  • Objectives, methods, approaches, strategies, actors and life phases are analyzed

  • Research lacks a systemic approach in terms of ecosystem, phases, and strategies

  • A research agenda with ten research directions is framed

Abstract

Environmental pressures and climate change are leading companies and supply chains to consider new models for environmental protection. Circular Economy emerged as a sustainability paradigm able to decouple economic growth from resource consumption and waste generation. In the Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) industry there is the need for systematically reviewing what the literature has investigated and found in the light of the Circular Economy perspective. Thus, this paper aims to systematize the extensive scientific literature that exists about sustainability in the WEEE industry with a Circular Economy lens. Overall, 115 articles were selected and analyzed according to four aspects: (i.) objectives and methodology, (ii.) geography and approach, (iii.) actors and life cycle phases, (iv.) Circular Economy 4R scheme of Reduce, Reuse, Remanufacture and Recycle strategies. The analysis led to the identification of several research gaps in the literature, which academia is called to fill. This state-of-the-art review provides ten research directions that constitute the backbone of a research agenda about Circular Economy in the WEEE industry, as well as an improved managerial understanding of this research field.

Introduction

The Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) deals with the waste generated from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE), encompassing a broad variety of products that range from large household appliances such as washing machines to information and communication technologies such as computers or mobile phones (Manhart, 2011). WEEE represents the widest and fastest-growing source of global waste worldwide: ca. 45 million tons of WEEE are yearly disposed of globally, with an annual growth rate of 3-5% (Baldé et al., 2017). Consequently, several countries have specific legislation targeted WEEE. For instance, the European Union has a specific Directive aiming at contributing to a sustainable production and consumption of EEE, through the prevention of WEEE by design and through their reuse, recovery and recycling. This Directive recalls Extended Producer Responsibility principles and sets collection targets to Countries equal to the 65% of the materials placed on the market in the three preceding years (Coughlan and Fitzpatrick, 2020).

The WEEE industry is gaining primary importance within a Circular Economy (CE) context. CE not only encourages closing the loop of products, components and materials through a combined improvement in the design of EEE, but also drives servitized leasing and sharing business models (Bressanelli et al., 2019; Rosa et al., 2019; Urbinati et al., 2017). Given its potential to decouple economic growth from resource use and consumption, CE can be seen as a means to achieve sustainable development (Hofmann, 2019; Kjaer et al., 2019; Merli et al., 2018). Under a CE scheme, the WEEE industry has a significant recycling economic potential: the overall value of raw materials included in WEEE can be estimated in ca. 55 Billion Euros (Baldé et al., 2017).

However, only 8.9 million tons of WEEE (20% of the total) is properly collected and recycled worldwide (Baldé et al., 2017), and companies, organizations and governments are still struggling with the implementation of CE in the WEEE industry. Thus, there is still a significant challenge in achieving the potential environmental, social and economic gains linked with the implementation of CE within the WEEE industry. Some of the key challenges and gaps are related to:

  • Lack of a systematisation of CE strategies for an enhanced recovery of precious and special resources in WEEE (Cucchiella et al., 2015; D'Adamo et al., 2016);

  • Lack of a sector-specific approach for CE implementation within the WEEE industry – the literature is still generic in the context of manufacturing companies (Blomsma et al., 2019; Lieder and Rashid, 2016);

  • Lack of a more prescriptive research agenda focused on the WEEE industry – the focus is still mainly descriptive (Ghisellini et al., 2016; Prieto-Sandoval et al., 2018; Winans et al., 2017);

  • Limited discussion of WEEE through the perspective of the CE paradigm, since WEEE is a topic that emerged well before the emergence of CE (most of the literature is still focused on the discussion of the sustainability in the WEEE industry).

To address these gaps, this paper aims to systematize the extensive scientific literature that exists about sustainability in the WEEE industry with a CE lens regarding (i.) what previous research has done in terms of objectives and how they have been achieved, (ii.) where and how it has mainly geographically focused on, (iii.) who have been the actors mainly addressed and when the focus was put in terms of life cycle phases, and (iv.) how CE has been implemented in the WEEE industry to achieve sustainability. The main goal is to gather and interpret the existing landscape of knowledge, in order to devise a research agenda and managerial implications for scholars and practitioners working in the CE and WEEE domains.

The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2 provides the methodology used to analyze the literature. The results of the systematic literature review are presented in Section 3. Section 4 discusses the findings and proposes a research agenda for scholars interested in advancing the research of CE in the WEEE domain. Lastly, Section 5 provides concluding remarks, managerial implications and research limitations.

Section snippets

Systematic Literature Review design

The scientific literature has been scrutinized in a systematic way, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al., 2009). To ensure transparency and clarity, the PRISMA guidelines follow a four-step process (Figure 1).

Circular Economy in the WEEE industry: a systematic review of the literature

In this Section, the results obtained in the literature review are presented on the basis of the investigated aspects.

Discussion: a Research Agenda for advancing Circular Economy research in the WEEE industry

The results of the systematic literature review within each one of the four investigated aspects were further analyzed to allow the identification of specific research gaps, which were subsequently translated into the definition of a research agenda for advancing the research on CE in the WEEE industry (Table 2).

The analysis of objectives and methodologies of the sample of papers (Aspect #1) shed light on what previous literature has done (i.e. what objectives were pursued), how the objectives

Conclusion

This article contributes to the consolidation of scientific knowledge on the intersection between CE and the WEEE industry. 115 articles were systematically selected and analyzed, following the methodology and the Framework of Section 2.

By systematizing the extensive scientific literature that exists about sustainability in the WEEE industry with a CE lens, this paper discussed and shed light on (i.) what previous research has done (objectives and methodology), (ii.) where and how the

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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