Strategic management of WEEE in Switzerland—combining material flow analysis with structural analysis

• Assessment of material and substance flows originating from laptops and mobile phones.
• Structural analysis provided interrelations between system variables.
• We combined quantitative and qualitative approaches for system analysis.
• The results provide policy support and strategic orientations for WEEE management.

Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is one of the fastest growing waste streams, worldwide. In addition to the increasing amount, WEEE consists of numerous toxic, precious and scarce metals which makes its recycling and safe disposal an important environmental issue. Switzerland has a well-established recycling system operating since 1992. With 15 kg of WEEE collected per inhabitant in 2011, Switzerland is one of the leading countries in collection. However, small electronic devices and IT and telecommunication equipment that do not constitute a significant mass in overall WEEE pose greater challenges to collection and recycling due to their size and dissipative structure. Among these categories, laptops and mobile phones stand out with increasing penetration rate, decreasing lifetime, and complex composition with high concentrations of precious metals in relatively small volumes. This study investigated the recycling of WEEE in Switzerland with particular focus on material flows of laptops and mobile phones as well as copper, silver, gold, and palladium originated from these products in 2011. Material flow analysis revealed collection rate for laptops and mobile phones as 35 and 37% and treatment rates as 28% and 15%, respectively. The overall recycling rates for copper, silver, gold, and palladium in laptops were estimated as 21, 13, 14, and 14%, respectively. As a result of lower treatment rate for mobile phones the recycling rates were found as 12% for copper, 7% for silver 8% for gold and palladium. In addition to the quantitative assessment of the recycling programme’s performance, Structural analysis was carried out to understand the underlying socio-economic, technical, and political elements that are influential in this case. The results suggest that external factors such as metal prices and criticality of metals have large influence on material flows. By coupling stakeholders' conceptualization of the system with material flows, this study strives to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the system for strategic management of WEEE in Switzerland.