An overview of methods used for estimating e-waste amount

Abstract

Electrical and electronics products become obsolete with technological innovations or changes in customer preferences. Thus, each new product or a new version of an existing product pushes the old one into the E-waste stream. E-waste is one of the fastest growing waste types and it seems that this rapid increase will continue due to shortening lifecycles of technological products. Therefore, the estimation of E-waste amount has a crucial role in designing efficient E-waste management and treatment systems. There are various estimation methods in the literature, some of which are drawn from general estimation and forecasting models and others that are specially designed depending on the E-waste constraints and boundaries. This chapter offers a detailed and comparative presentation of E-waste estimation methods. An example for each estimation method is provided to further explain the method. © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.