Life cycle-based environmental, social, and economic assessment of waste printed circuit board management in isolated island areas: A case study in British Columbia, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The rapid increase in the use of electronic equipment has led to a significant rise in waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs), which can pose severe environmental risks if not properly managed. This study evaluates the environmental, social, and economic performances of four WPCB management scenarios for island communities, using a comprehensive framework that combines Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). When constructing the scenarios, scenario 1 considered the mechanical separation of WPCBs with subsequent recycling of the metallic fractions and direct landfilling of the non-metallic fractions. In scenario 2, compared to scenario 1, the non-metallic fractions are incinerated before landfilling. Scenarios 3 and 4 involve the direct incineration and direct landfilling of the entire WPCBs, respectively. The results indicate that scenario 1 is the most favorable option. It yields the highest positive environmental (-4,720 kg CO 2 eq. per tonne of WPCBs) and social (-30,679 ELU per tonne of WPCBs) impact while remaining economically viable. In contrast, scenario 3 exhibits the most significant negative impacts across all subcategories, and one-tonne WPCBs can contribute 2,750 kg CO 2 eq. and 729 ELU in environmental and social perspectives in this case, respectively. The study emphasizes the importance of metal recovery processes in achieving sustainable WPCB management and provides critical insights for policymakers and waste management professionals in isolated island areas. This framework offers a robust tool for optimizing WPCB disposal systems, balancing the trade-offs between environmental sustainability, social impacts, and economic costs, and guiding future practices and policies in e-waste management. • Precious metals recovered from WPCBs offer considerable economic benefits. • Metal recovery and incineration significantly affect WPCB disposal impacts. • On islands, shorter transport distances and higher recycling rates are optimal. • Incineration and landfilling are simpler but do not provide long-term sustainability.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".