Project description

Our increasingly digital society depends on ever heavier and more complex electronic equipment. Without a radical transformation in how electronics are designed, produced, used, and recovered, global e-waste volumes are projected to grow fourfold over the next two decades, while the raw materials they depend on are rapidly depleted. These products combine rapid innovation cycles with relatively short lifetimes, resulting in the world's fastest-growing waste stream after the use phase — particularly in the consumer electronics sector. Electronics are among the most important application areas of critical raw materials and other valuable metals. In total, electronics contain more than 60 chemical elements, of which many are not recovered from the electronic waste.

The project's ambition is to develop a fully circular generation of electronics at the component, printed circuit board (PCB), and product level, by addressing several levers of increased circularity. The project is funded by the NWO and brings together five universities (TUD, TU/e, RU, LU, EUR), one applied research organization (TNO), and one university of applied science (Saxion, RUAS). Furthermore are 21 industrial partners, one government organization, and the Materials Innovation Institute of the Netherlands are involved. The work is divided into the following work packages:

• WP1 quantifies how much material accumulates in electronics across society, where and why it is lost at end of life, and what the environmental impacts of this resource use are.
• WP2 takes a technical lens, identifying the failure mechanisms — such as corrosion and fatigue — that cause components to break down, with the aim of extending product lifetimes.
• WP3 determines how electronic design choices affect later-stage recycling, and develops design guidelines that prevent materials from becoming inseparable at end of life.
• WP4 technologically improves PCB recycling and identifies the steps required for enhanced metal recovery from waste streams.
• WP5 takes a business lens, exploring how circular business models can increase circularity in the electronics sector.

CML leads WP1, modelling the quantities of electronics in society and their environmental impacts, with the ultimate goal of identifying how circularity at end of life can be increased through enhanced collection, sorting, and recovery. This is achieved by combining dynamic material flow analysis (MFA) with life cycle assessment (LCA). WP1 further supports the other work packages with knowledge and understanding of the environmental impacts of resource use in electronics.

• circular economy
• critical raw materials
• lca
• recycling

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