Policies and regulations such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) have been implemented to potentially increase the recycling rate of electronic waste (e-waste), but the cost and environmental impacts of associated collection, transportation, material recovery, material re-processing, and disposal could outweigh the benefits of recycling if the e-waste management system is not effectively designed and implemented. This paper presents a quantitative, holistic framework to systematically estimate life-cycle impacts and costs associated with e-waste management. This new framework was tested using data from the state of Washington's EPR program to represent e-waste collection, transportation, processing and disposal. Sensitivity of process-level life-cycle model outputs to parameter and input variability was also conducted. Drop-off using fossil-fuel-powered personal vehicles was found to be a key contributor to cost and carbon dioxide emissions. Decision-makers must account for drop-off and consider the feasibility of alternate e-waste aggregation strategies to ensure life-cycle benefits of e-waste recycling are maximized.

已经实施了诸如生产者扩展责任（EPR）之类的政策和法规，以潜在地提高电子废物（电子废物）的回收率，但是相关的收集，运输，材料回收，材料再加工以及相关的成本和环境影响如果电子废物管理系统未得到有效设计和实施，则处置可能会超过回收的收益。本文提出了一个定量，整体的框架，以系统地估计与电子废物管理相关的生命周期影响和成本。使用来自华盛顿州EPR计划的数据测试了这个新框架，以代表电子废物的收集，运输，加工和处置。还进行了过程级生命周期模型输出对参数和输入变量的敏感性。人们发现，使用化石燃料驱动的私人车辆下车是造成成本和二氧化碳排放的主要因素。决策者必须考虑排放量，并考虑其他电子废物聚集策略的可行性，以确保最大程度地利用电子废物回收的生命周期。