Abstract
For strategic waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) management, it is showing more and more important that avoiding both the negative impacts on ecosystem and human health, as well as strengthening the positive impacts on resource utilizing, especially to developing countries such as china. To date, technology innovation that has accelerated the transition of substance contents in electronic products can have significant influence on evaluation of environmental impact potential. Therefore, understanding the substance contents and their environmental impact potential is unequivocally important for guiding pollution prevention strategies to reduce the impact of toxins as well as provide the information on the recovery priority of valuables during disposal and treatment processes. Thus the objective of this study is to categorize the substances contained in End- of- Life (EoL) EEE for supporting WEEE management decision-making in China. In this paper, we categorized the substances contained in EoL television sets and personal computers from environmental, resource and economic aspects under consideration of product substitutions. The substances in Group 1 and 2 have high negative potential impacts if not be adequately recovered. The substances in Group 5 provide a prominent economic incentive for recovery and recycling as well as alleviation of damage to resource availability.
