Life cycle assessment of environmental impacts of end-of-life management of E-waste: a case study of CRT-Television

Abstract

According to the Pollution Control Department (PCD), Thailand has about 2 to 2.5 million sets of TV being discarded in every year. At present, most of these wastes are still treated improperly which could cause severe impacts to the environment and human health. An effective tool to identify and quantify the impacts from product is life cycle assessment (LCA). In this study, LCA is used to assess environmental impacts of CRT television with a focus on its end-of-life management. The data for the analysis were gathered from secondary data sources in available database and primary data obtained from walk-thru survey at the existing sites in Kalasin and Bangkok provinces. The data were analyzed using commercial LCA software, SimaPro 7.1, with Eco-Indicator 95 and CML 2 baseline 2000 methods. For end-of-life study, the CRT-TV waste management (incineration, recycling, and landfilling) from other countries such as China and Japan were explored and developed as references to generate various scenarios for CRT-TV end-of-life management. From the results, it was found that the current situation defined as Base Case had the highest impacts in all impact categories studied, while the improved base case and modified scenarios showed much better environmental improvement. The results obtained from this work provide useful information and guidelines for sustainable e-waste management in Thailand.