Waste electric and electronic toys: management practices and characterisation

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to characterise, both physically and chemically, waste electric and electronic toys, belonging to the category 7 of the Directive, 2012/19/UE, in order to obtain information about the generation and composition of this waste which is not widely found in the literature. For this, a campaign was designed with the aim of collecting a representative sample of waste toys in different schools in a Spanish town. Altogether 1014.25 kg of waste toys were collected, of which 31.83% corresponded to the electric and electronic fraction, which is the object of study. The collected wastes were divided into subcategories and a representative sample of each was one used to characterise them physically and chemically. Physical characterisation provided information about the materials they were made of, the electrical and electronic parts, fixing and assembly systems, and so forth. The results showed that the weight of a toy is comprised of 72.30% of plastics, 12.07% of electrical and electronic components, 4.47% of metals, and 11.15% other materials. In general, the most common types of polymers were PS, PP and ABS. Chemical characterisation made it possible to analyse the composition of the plastic components, which is information that is essential to be able to determine the feasibility of recovering the resulting fractions. The results showed that the content of hazardous substances in these plastics is far below the limits stipulated in Directive 2002/95/EC (RoSH Directive). The findings of this study show a need for a specific management system for this fraction of domestic wastes and a wide range of potential reusability of the discarded toys since 65% of the toys from the collected sample worked in perfect condition. We also found that the end-of-life is one of the aspects that have not been considered during their design as both materials and disassembly sequence do not facilitate the end-of-life of this type of wastes. This information could be used to improve the ecodesign of electrical and electronic equipment toys regarding their end-of-life.