Thermodynamic rarity assessment of WEEE plant

The production, use and disposal of electronics has grown rapidly in recent years. Electronics contain various elements, some of which are considered geologically scarce or critical. Electronics are central to strategic sectors in the EU, and the recovery of critical raw materials (CRMs) from the end-of-life of electronics receives special attention in EU policies. Scientific approaches to evaluate the scarcity of certain materials are available, but the embedding of such methods in policies seems lacking. This study proposes to apply the novel method named a thermodynamic rarity assessment to the end-of-life processing of Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). This new perspective estimates the quantified flows and adds a weighting to specific elements based on their geological abundance (rarity). A WEEE recycler in Italy is sampled to explore the application of the thermodynamic rarity assessment to inform EU policy on CRMs. Three manual samples were carried out between December 2020 and May 2021; this research is ongoing.