Insight into quantities, flows, and recycling technology of E-waste in China for resource sustainable society

The difficulty of tracking the metabolism of e-waste throughout its life cycle caused by scattered distribution has long constrained the development of the recycling industry and further policy making. In this study, the monitoring of Chinese e-waste, including sources, flows, scrap, and recycling potentials of electronic products, was measured and predicted based on data from both the government and 109 formal e-waste recycling enterprises. From 2009 to 2030, the inventory of electronic products is expected to increase due to overcapacity and near saturation of household possession. Meanwhile, the total amount of e-waste scrapping is predicted to increase from 1.77 million tons to 18.86 million tons, and the amount of generated e-waste will also increase, reaching 240 million tons by 2030. Currently, e-waste recycling is gradually becoming the official waste disposal approach. However, this newly emerged industry has numerous problems, such as lower recycling efficiency and scale, lack of advanced technologies, and corresponding laws and regulations. Hence, the data collected and analyzed in this study shed light on the e-waste market size in China. Meanwhile, to establish an ideal resource-sustainable society, suggestions regarding the optimization of the e-waste recycling industry through legal, reasonable, and efficient methods are put forward from our point of view.