Recycling of telecommunication products in Europe, Japan and USA

This article reports on a study carried out within Ericsson Radio Systems. The aim was to provide input to an Ericsson strategy for treatment of end-of-life products. A representative product was sent for recycling to five different recycling companies in Japan, Europe and the USA. An evaluation was made from technical, economic and environmental perspectives. The options for end-of-life treatment, manual disassembly and mechanized shredding were compared. The result of the economic evaluation favored shredding. A life cycle assessment carried out simultaneously ranked shredding and manual disassembly equally, assuming there is no hazardous substance contents providing a problem when shredding