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Matching end-of-life household vehicle generation and recycling capacity in Chinese cities: A spatio-temporal analysis for 2022–2050
Abstract
End-of-life vehicles (ELVs) present both opportunities and challenges for the environment and the economy, where effective recycling management plays a decisive role. Recently, the primary focus of recycling management has shifted from simply meeting demand to refining and optimizing processes at the city-scale. However, the mismatch in recycling capacity has become a significant obstacle to maximizing environmental and economic benefits. To reveal this issue and propose improvements in the context of China, this study simulates end-of-life internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) and new energy vehicles (NEVs) at the city-scale from 2021 to 2050, and analyzes their spatio-temporal pattern and recycling capacity matching. The results indicate that the number of ELVs in China will continue to increase, peaking between 3.5 and 3.7 million. This growth will be mainly driven by third- to fifth-tier cities, as well as central and southwestern cities. Regarding recycling capacity matching, most cities possess excess dismantling capacity, while first-tier cities face coordination problems in battery collection. Spatial coordination across cities or provinces is a viable approach for dismantling enterprises and should be prioritized over indiscriminate deregistration or establishing new facilities. The absence of initiative within the recycling system results in uncoordinated battery collection. Implementing a recycling-sharing mechanism and establishing a reuse market can effectively tackle this problem by leveraging market incentives. These analyses provide practical suggestions to maximize the environmental and economic benefits of resource recycling, thereby contributing to the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
... The Weibull distribution, commonly utilized for predicting product life and reliability in the design phase [47], is particularly suited to complex products such as ships. In fact, most studies that have used the Weibull distribution on complex products have provided a good approximation of the actual distribution of the lifespan [42,49,50]. ...
This paper conducts a detailed exploration of projected trends in the demolition and recycling of the European ship fleet, in light of the dismantling capacity in Europe. Utilizing a robust predictive model based on the Weibull distribution, the study synthesizes historical data and current operational metrics to forecast trends up to the year 2050, such as ship typologies, their average age, and recycling frequency. By estimating the rate and volume of ships reaching their end-of-life (EOL), the study aims to delineate the required capacity for ship recycling in Europe over the coming decades. The analysis reveals the key factors influencing the demolition trajectory and provide essential insights for future planning and policy formulation in the field of ship recycling. The study also underscore the importance of developing adaptive strategies in ship dismantling catering to the anticipated shifts in fleet composition and evolving environmental regulations, offering a foundation for informed decision-making and policy development in the maritime industry.
... Improper disposal of end-of-life vehicles can have catastrophic effects on the environment and public health. For example, toxic materials in discarded batteries (such as lithium, cobalt, lead, and electrolyte additives) might have harmful impacts on the natural environment and human health during transportation and mechanical disassembly stages (Bauer et al. 2022;Ren et al. 2023). On the other hand, traffic congestion has emerged as a severe issue in numerous Chinese cities, resulting in increased travel durations and escalated costs for both commuters and freight companies. ...
Unequal outcomes resulting from urbanization can pose a significant challenge to sustainable development. Vehicles are an important urbanization dimension as a critical component of urban infrastructure by providing mobility and accessibility to social services. China’s vehicle ownership (referred to as in-use vehicle stocks) has been growing quickly since 2000, but its per capita stocks are still much lower than that in developed economies. This raises the question of whether and when China’s vehicle stocks will reach a peak level close to that in the developed countries. By analyzing vehicle stocks in 283 Chinese cities during 2001–2018, we have the following findings: (1) vehicle stocks are predominantly distributed in northern and eastern coastal cities and provincial capital cities; (2) inequality in vehicle ownership rates between cities shows a declining trend at both national and region scales; (3) the growth of vehicle ownership rates follows an S-shape curve and most cities are still at the early stage of motorization; (4) China is likely to have a lower saturation level of vehicle ownership rate. These results could help to accurately forecast future vehicle demand in China, estimate the resulting environmental impacts, and explore strategies to achieve carbon neutrality in transportation.
... Lastly, knowledge of technological advancements and innovation in ELV recycling and resource recovery can significantly boost policy acceptance. Highlighting innovative solutions and sustainable practices demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of ELV policies, making them more appealing to the public [9,69]. ...
In developing countries where comprehensive policies addressing the environmental impact of ELV have been implemented, this mixed-methods study examines the complex relationship between knowledge and social acceptance of ELV policies in developing countries. The study integrates a quantitative survey with 150 participants and a qualitative phase featuring in-depth interviews with 15 individuals. The quantitative survey explores participants' understanding and acceptance of various aspects of ELV policies, revealing diverse knowledge levels on environmental, economic, public health, safety, and technological dimensions. Notably, there is a solid willingness to comply with these policies, highlighting their perceived importance in safeguarding environmental and public health. The qualitative phase delves deeper, uncovering factors influencing social acceptance, such as limited awareness, positive attitudes, and considerations related to economic, safety, and health concerns. This study emphasizes the critical role of knowledge in shaping the social acceptance of ELV policies, demonstrating that an informed public is more inclined to have favorable attitudes and greater acceptance. By blending quantitative and qualitative insights, we obtain a holistic understanding of the interplay between knowledge and social acceptance concerning ELV policies. This comprehensive perspective is invaluable for policymakers and stakeholders, underscoring the necessity of well-informed strategies to boost public comprehension and acceptance of ELV policies. The findings indicate that effective communication and education initiatives could significantly enhance the implementation and effectiveness of ELV policies in developed nations, suggesting a pivotal role for targeted educational and awareness campaigns in achieving policy goals.
The passenger car sector accounts for nearly half of all transport-related emissions. Rapid decarbonization is therefore important but challenging, particularly in China, where, despite recent emission peak (by 2030) and carbon-neutrality (by 2060) pledges, car ownership and associated emissions are increasing. Successful emissions reduction will require a rapid transition of both technology (e.g., toward electrification) and demand (e.g., driving less). However, how to successfully deploy these twin strategies for optimal outcomes remains unclear. Here, we develop an integrated fleet dynamics model that considers emissions associated with car manufacturing, operation, end-of-life recycling, and energy supply alongside socioeconomic changes. Our analyses reveal that optimal short-term results will be achieved through demand-oriented strategies, which can reduce emissions by 22% and achieve 2030 emissions peak targets. Technology-oriented strategies are more optimal when deployed in the longer term and can result in emission reductions of 91%. A successfully coordinated strategy could reduce China’s passenger cars CO2 emissions to 0.05 Gt by 2050.
The wide adoption of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles will require increased natural resources for the automotive industry. The expected rapid increase in batteries could result in new resource challenges and supply-chain risks. To strengthen
the resilience and sustainability of automotive supply chains and reduce primary resource requirements, circular economy strategies are needed. Here we illustrate how these strategies can reduce the extraction of primary raw materials, that is, cobalt
supplies. Material flow analysis is applied to understand current and future flows of cobalt embedded in electric vehicle batteries across the European Union. A reference scenario is presented and compared with four strategies: technology-driven substitution
and technology-driven reduction of cobalt, new business models to stimulate battery reuse/recycling and policy-driven strategy to increase recycling. We find that new technologies provide the most promising strategies to reduce the reliance on
cobalt substantially but could result in burden shifting such as an increase in nickel demand. To avoid the latter, technological developments should be combined with an efficient recycling system. We conclude that more-ambitious circular economy strategies,
at both government and business levels, are urgently needed to address current and future resource challenges across the supply chain successfully.
In response to a growing demand for subnational and spatially explicit data on China’s future population, this study estimates China’s provincial population from 2010 to 2100 by age (0–100+), sex (male and female) and educational levels (illiterate, primary school, junior-high school, senior-high school, college, bachelor’s, and master’s and above) under different shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). The provincial projection takes into account fertility promoting policies and population ceiling restrictions of megacities that have been implemented in China in recent years to reduce systematic biases in current studies. The predicted provincial population is allocated to spatially explicit population grids for each year at 30 arc-seconds resolution based on representative concentration pathway (RCP) urban grids and historical population grids. The provincial projection data were validated using population data in 2017 from China’s Provincial Statistical Yearbook, and the accuracy of the population grids in 2015 was evaluated. These data have numerous potential uses and can serve as inputs in climate policy research with requirements for precise administrative or spatial population data in China.
Significance
The determination of long-term in-use stocks of manufactured products can complement existing monetary approaches to measuring manufactured capital and helps to explore the linkage between manufactured capital and natural capital in terms of materials transfer. The development of new products, substitution among products, and the historical evolution of in-use product stocks in the United States reveal the increase in variety, improvement in quality, and growth in quantity of US manufactured capital. Because products are produced from materials, and products developed more recently tend to use a greater diversity of materials, this study also reveals that US modern manufactured capital relies on the use of more diverse materials and on the increasing use of materials that originate from natural capital.
Product lifespan estimates are important information for understanding progress toward sustainable consumption and estimating the stocks and end-of-life flows of products. Publications reported actual lifespan of products; however, quantitative data is still limited for many countries and years. This study presents regional and longitudinal estimation of lifespan distribution of consumer durables, taking passenger cars as an example, and proposes a simplified method for estimating product lifespan distribution. We estimated lifespan distribution parameters for 17 countries based on the age profile of in-use cars. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated that the shape parameter of the lifespan distribution can be replaced by a constant value for all the countries and years. This enabled a simplified estimation that does not require detailed data on the age profile. Applying the simplified method, we estimated the trend in average lifespans of passenger cars from 2000 to 2009 for 20 countries. Average lifespan differed greatly between countries (9-23 years) and was increasing in many countries. This suggests consumer behavior differs greatly among countries and has changed over time, even in developed countries. The results suggest that inappropriate assumptions of average lifespan may cause significant inaccuracy in estimating the stocks and end-of-life flows of products.
Urban sustainability requires a coordinated development between urban built environment and human activities in cities. The irrational allocation of built environment stocks such as buildings and roads has led to urban problems like urban villages and ghost cities. However, the human use efficiency of urban built environment within cities and their coordinated development at a high spatial resolution remain hitherto poorly understood. Here, we aim to address this knowledge gap by leveraging the coupling coordination degree (CCD) method and emerging geospatial big data. We develop a framework that considers intra-city heterogeneity to achieve high-resolution mapping of the CCD between built environment and human activity at a grid level of 250m*250m for a case of Beijing, China. Our results show that the CCD of urban built environment and human activity in Beijing has a significant spatial correlation with a global Morans I of 0.716 and the two subsystems are well coupled in most areas. While the built environment subsystem lags in some old urban areas and commercial districts in the city center, human activity lags slightly in areas such as factories at the edge of the city. We suggest such methods could be extended to other cities to inform urban spatial planning and infrastructure development and maximize the human use efficiency of urban built environment in different cities and at different stages of urban development.
Understanding urban functions help with government planning and resource allocation to promote economic development. Few studies have reflected the influence of population movement and migration on urban functions overtime on a large scale. This study adopted the time-series social media data and points of interest to analyse urban functions' distribution at the county scale. By employing dynamic time warping distance and K-Medoids to cluster cities, the result of China's hourly population distribution over different periods achieves a high accuracy (Pearson's R = 0.821, R2 = 0.668). From the clustering results, time-series population data effectively reflect cities' socioeconomic characteristics and identify the spatial distribution of China's urban functional patterns. We select four representative urban agglomerations to deeply analyse their urban function patterns. Furthermore, urban functions can also influence changes in time-series populations. This study explores the correlations between time-series population mobility and urban functions, which could help analyse urban functions and urban socioeconomic conditions.
With the rapid development of China's automobile industry, the surge in the number of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) has put great pressure on the environment. On the other hand, ELVs contain multiple recyclable metal resources and can be regarded as an important source of urban mining. In order to explore the potential of secondary resources supplies from urban mines in the automotive industry, considering different policy conditions, this study not only forecasts China's recyclable metal resources from 2021 to 2030 at the national level, but also introduces two indicators of area and population, focusing on the differences in provincial distribution. Combined with the characteristics of each province, the gap between future demand for vehicle scrap recycling and the current status of China's ELV management is analyzed. The results show that although the extension of vehicle service life in the future will effectively reduce the number of ELVs, there will be an obvious imbalance of ELV between provinces by 2030 due to the different development conditions of provinces. In the future, considering the insufficient landfills and high disposal costs in relatively developed areas, ELV recycling channels should be set up in multiple geographical locations within China, so that the pressure of controlling total domestic ELV recycling can be eased, as well as the governance of dismantling enterprises.
Having transformed our way of life, rechargeable batteries are poised for exponential growth over the coming decade, notably due to the wider adoption of electric vehicles. An international expert panel proposes a combination of vision, innovation and practice for feasible pathways toward sustainable batteries.
Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries and lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide (NCM) batteries are the most widely used power lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in electric vehicles (EVs) currently. The future trend is to reuse LIBs retired from EVs for other applications, such as energy storage systems (ESS). However, the environmental performance of LIBs during the entire life cycle, from the cradle to the grave, has not been extensively discussed. In this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to quantify and compare the environmental impacts of LFP and NCM batteries. Apart from the phases of production, the first use in EVs, and recycling, the repurposing of retired LIBs and their secondary use in the ESS were also included in the system boundary. Also, the environmental impacts of various recycling processes were evaluated. The LCA results suggested that the NCM battery had better comprehensive environmental performance than the LFP one but shorter service life over the whole life cycle. In China, the first and secondary use phases contributed most to the environmental impacts with electricity mostly generated from fossil fuels. The LIB production phase was relevant to all assessed impact categories and contributed more than 50% to Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP elements) particularly. The environmental loads could be mitigated through the recovery of metals and other materials. And, hydrometallurgy was recommended for recycling waste LIBs by better environmental advantages than pyrometallurgy and direct physical recycling. Sensitivity analysis revealed that by optimizing the charge-discharge efficiency of LIBs, particularly LFP batteries, all environmental burdens could be considerably decreased. Therefore, improving the electrochemical performance of LIBs and increasing the use proportion of clean energy were crucial to reduce the environmental impacts over their entire life cycle.
China is now boasting a huge number of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) with a low recovery rate, resulting in a waste of resources and severe environmental pollution. Predicting the generation of ELVs in future helps to enhance recycling efficiency by providing a basis for the planning of recycling industry. However, previous research did not provide a detailed, mid-term forecast. Based on a stocks-driven model and the bottom-up extrapolation of in-use stocks, this study characterizes the generation of end-of-life household vehicles (HVs) in China by addressing the detailed spatial-temporal patterns and resource potentials during 2019–2050. The results show that the annual end-of-life HVs in China will continuously increase during 2019–2050, resulting an accumulated 1.48 billion units, among which urban areas will account for 86%, and internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) will take up 80%. Regarding the spatial patterns, eastern region will possess the largest proportion, and wide variations are found among all provinces due to the difference in population size and economic development level, which have important implications for further planning of end-of-life HVs recycling industry. Before 2050, accumulated quantity of all types of metals in end-of-life HVs will approach domestic mine production (in 2019), or even approach the current global mine production, indicating they have a great potential as an indispensable source for domestic resource supply.
A better understanding of the waste of end-of-life batteries from electric vehicles (EVs) is a basis for their sustainable management. This study aims to estimate the waste of end-of-life EV batteries during 2006–2040 in China and to analyze the opportunities and challenges of subsequent utilization, based on a developed numerical model, real market data, and elaborately developed scenarios. The result shows that end-of-life batteries would increase from 0.1 to 7.8 thousand tons during 2012–2018, and then to 1500–3300 thousand tons in 2040. Of the waste streams, around 50% are estimated to be metal materials, representing great opportunities for battery recycling for material recovery. Economically, battery recycling for energy storage is estimated to create more economic benefits compared with that for material recovery solely (147.8 versus 76.9 billion US dollars). However, the supply of end-of-life batteries can hardly meet the demand for renewable energy storage in the near future, and a spatial mismatch of the supply and demand of energy storage capacity exists between the eastern and western regions in China. Accordingly, this study highlights national coordination for the rational layout of the collection, disassembly, and remanufacture facilities for the second use of end-of-life EV batteries in China.
China is expected to realise the complete electrification of traditional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) by 2050. The rapid development of electric vehicles (EVs) has led to the continuous growth of traction lithium-ion battery (LIB) demand, leading to an increase in demand for specific lithium materials. Therefore, end-of-life (EoL) LIB recycling will largely determine the future lithium availability in China. However, the contribution of recovered lithium to lithium availability is unclear, as the possibility of recovering lithium for reuse in traction LIBs manufacturing is uncertain. To analyse the influence of recovered lithium quality on future lithium availability, we evaluated the potential impact of EoL LIB recycling on lithium demand in China. The results indicated that if new LIB manufacturing cannot use the recovered lithium; the secondary resources would soon exceed the needs of the basic demand (BD) field. In the optimistic scenario, when a LiS battery is used, the oversupply could reach 2.33 Mt by 2050 with a recovery rate of 80%, which is equivalent to 44.05% of China's current lithium reserves of 5.29 Mt. Additionally, when the NCM-G battery is used, the total lithium demand would reach approximately 5.67 Mt in 2031, exceeding China's current lithium reserves. In contrast, if the recovered lithium could be reused in new LIB manufacturing, regardless of the type of LIBs used, the recovered lithium would meet approximately 60% (pessimistic scenario), 53% (neutral scenario), and 49% (optimistic scenario) of the lithium demand for LIBs produced with a recovery rate of 80% by 2050. Consequently, the quality of recovered lithium is very important for its reuse, and it is necessary to develop closed-loop recycling with economic benefits vigorously by improving the quality of recovered lithium. Moreover, much work should be done in recycling infrastructure and industrial policies to promote EoL battery recycling.
To have a deeper understanding of the Chinese market reaction for different subsidy policies made by the government, we establish a game model of the competition between legal recyclers and illegal recyclers with government involved. Further, we consider the quality differentiation of end-of-life vehicles in every player's decision-making. With a numerical simulation, the researchers validated this study. Based on the results of this research, we found that compared with the strategy of subsidizing the legal recyclers, subsidizing the end-of-life vehicle owners is more effective, and the legal recyclers would get more business from end-of-life vehicle owners. The quality of end-of-life vehicles plays a vital role when the recyclers make decisions on their recycling behaviour. Moreover, the differential subsidy policy will probably be useless if most of the end-of-life vehicles in the market are in poor quality. So, the Chinese government should adjust its policies on end-of-life vehicle market development based on the quality distribution of end-of-life vehicles, and the quality management should be implemented in the end-of-life vehicle supply chain for the efficiency and effectiveness of subsidy policies.
Forecasting the trend of scrapped household automobiles (HAs) at the city level will help to improve the automobile recycling system, and further promote the implementation of the national circular economy strategy. Based on a stocks-driven model, we project the generation of HAs scrap in urban and rural areas of Nanjing city in 2019–2050, under different scenarios of population development and automobile ownership growth. The results show Nanjing will display a notable net addition demand for HAs, with the in-use stocks increasing from 1.83 million units in 2018 to 3.68–6.11 million units in around 2038, then declining slightly till 2050. Because of wide gap in population size and difference in ownership rate, urban residents will occupy nearly 90% of the total amount for the incoming 3 decades. During the studied period, the total amount of HAs scrap in Nanjing will grow continuously to around 2042, reflecting a peak of scrap within the following two decades; then it will show a slight slide till 2050. The cumulative amount of HAs scrap will reach approximately 12.5–18.7 million, roughly 1.4–2 times of the estimated HAs for the whole nation in 2018. Again, scrapped HAs will be dominated by urban area. Compared with prediction results for the whole nation, Nanjing is shown to hold higher level of HAs in-use stocks and scrap as expected. The study then discusses the scenario uncertainty from the perspective of potential evolve of HAs lifetime distribution and the development of new-energy automobiles. The recycling potentials of scrapped HAs are finally estimated.
Rapid growth in the market for electric vehicles is imperative, to meet global targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to improve air quality in urban centres and to meet the needs of consumers, with whom electric vehicles are increasingly popular. However, growing numbers of electric vehicles present a serious waste-management challenge for recyclers at end-of-life. Nevertheless, spent batteries may also present an opportunity as manufacturers require access to strategic elements and critical materials for key components in electric-vehicle manufacture: recycled lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles could provide a valuable secondary source of materials. Here we outline and evaluate the current range of approaches to electric-vehicle lithium-ion battery recycling and re-use, and highlight areas for future progress. Processes for dismantling and recycling lithium-ion battery packs from scrap electric vehicles are outlined.
While electric vehicles (EVs) have been promoted for green consumption, improper or inadequate management of end-of-life (EOL) EV batteries, as the current practice, compromises the benefits of EV adoption. This study aims to contribute to both theoretical research of material flow analysis and timely management of EOL EV batteries at various geographic scales (i.e., national, state, and county). Theoretically, this study tests two battery lifespan scenarios (i.e., constantly at 3-8 years and dynamically increasing over time), three discard probability functions (i.e., uniform, truncated normal, and Weibull), and three EV sale projections (i.e., low, moderate, and high). Results show that the short-term EOL volume (by 2025) can be particularly sensitive to the lifespan parameter. The long-term estimates involve most uncertainties related to the EV market penetration. Various discard probability functions generally derive similar results. In practical terms, the results suggest that necessary infrastructure for proper EOL EV battery management is needed sooner than the public may have perceived. This study urges for regional planning that incorporates both temporal and spatial considerations. To illustrate an example of regional solutions, this study adopts empirical data in California to simulate and spatially match EOL EV battery clusters and the renewable energy facilities that can potentially reuse EV batteries as energy storage. Meanwhile, the spatial mis-match between the supply and demand, as can be the case in other regions, calls for region-wide coordination in terms of both infrastructure development and transportation planning.
The transportation sector constitutes approximately 25% of the total energy consumption and CO2 emissions worldwide. Therefore, in the last decades, several studies have been conducted to improve the energy efficiency of vehicles. A principal method to evaluate the total environmental effect of a vehicle is through the analysis of its life cycle. However, most of these analysis focused on the production and use phase, and little work has been performed to understand the material value of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). Previous works have not comprehensively considered the benefits of the phase above that can provide a different perspective on the total vehicle life cycle. Our study clarifies how the materials obtained from scrapped vehicles are used, and we propose an analysis method to assess their benefits by defining the concepts of energy and CO2 reductions. The Japanese ELV market is presented as a case study, and the material flow is elaborated. The energy and CO2 reductions are calculated as 52.8 MJ and 2.80 kg CO2 per kilogram of vehicle, demonstrating the importance of the analyzed phase in the entire life cycle. Finally, possible changes in ELV recycling to improve their benefits are discussed.
Reverse logistics is indispensable for resources reuse and circular economy, and a reverse logistics network optimization problem for end-of-life vehicles is studied frequently. Recent researches have focused on the material flow for different end-of-life vehicles. However, the primary question for an end-of-life vehicles recovery network is to determine optimal network nodes. To account for it, we considered a facility location allocation problem of end-of-life vehicles recovery network, and established a mathematical model to solve it. The model is used to achieve the minimization of cost for deciding optimal locations of end-of-life vehicles recovery network. The facility location allocation problem is a non-deterministic polynomial complete problem proved with increase in the number of candidate locations. This type of problem usually handled by a metaheuristics. Therefore, we proposed a valid novel approach based on artificial bee colony to solve the problem. Artificial bee colony is an optimization method that imitates bee behavior. Also, the proposed algorithm is applied to two different scale real-life cases, and some comparisons with several presented algorithms are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the presented method.
The growing generation of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in developing countries has attracted increasing attention due to its potential health and environmental impacts and high recycling potentials. For example, along with the rapid economic development, China has been experiencing a sharp increase in the production and use of TV sets and a quick transition from old fashion cathode ray tube (CRT) ones to flat panel display (FPT) ones. Understanding such dynamics would be important for predicting future WEEE generation. In this article, we developed a dynamic (from 1992 to 2040), bottom-up (TV sets by module by material), and stock-driven (using future possession as a driver) material flow analysis model to investigate the amount of metals and plastics embodied in obsolete TV sets in the future. We found that the total generation of obsolete TV sets in China will reach 142 million units by 2040, in which FPD TV sets contribute more after they started to dominate the market after 2009. These growing obsolete TV sets would mean potentially large amount of embodied materials that can be recycled. While most of the embodied precious metals (e.g., gold, silver, and palladium), common metals (e.g., iron, aluminum, zinc, and tin), toxic metals (e.g., mercury, barium, and antimony), and plastics will increase in future, copper and nickel show a first decrease then increase trend, and lead will be gradually phased out in obsolete TV sets. Our results could help inform waste management and recycling strategies and relevant decision makers (e.g., governmental agencies, manufactures, and recyclers) in the TV sets sector in China. Such a stock-driven and bottom-up approach can also be used for other e-waste issues and other countries.
This article discusses the role of lifestyle in physical material accounting and introduces a new method for simultaneously determining national or regional resource demand and waste generation through estimations of the population and its lifestyle, which is manifested in the stocks of service providing goods, their composition and lifetimes. Improving our comprehension of the stocks in use is essential for environmental policy making because (1) they are becoming the most important resource providers, (2) they are important drivers for resource and energy consumption as well as waste and emission generation, and (3) their magnitudes and dynamics are the parts of the material cycles that is usually least understood.A generic dynamic material flow analysis model is presented and applied for the diffusion of concrete in the Dutch dwelling stock for the period of 1900–2100. Simulation results are illustrated for a standard scenario and a parameter variation. The results show that (1) construction and demolition flows follow a cyclical behaviour, (2) the cycles of construction and demolition flows are phase displaced in the first half of the 21st century, with decreasing construction and increasing demolition, and (3) growth of the dwelling stock is becoming increasingly more material intensive as a growing amount of material is used for replacements.The presented stock dynamics approach can principally be applied for any anthropogenic material stock; however, it is most useful for the examination of metabolic consequences of diffusion processes of durable and fixed capital stocks.
A model initially developed for forecasts of air pollutant emissions from motor vehicles is presented, with special emphasis on its vehicle dynamics module. Vehicle density forecasts are performed separately for passenger cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles. Combined with estimates of vehicle usage parameters they are used to predict the total traffic volume up to the year 2010. The internal turnover of the vehicle fleet is simulated with a modified Weibull function, and the technology substitution process is determined nonanalytically. Although more refined approaches have been developed for the prediction of the dynamic behavior of car populations, the one presented here has been designed in such a way that it can be applied to countries where detailed information is lacking or too difficult to find, and even nonexperts can implement it reasonably well.
This research paper evolves from problems related to the environment as the result of today's product-based society and especially the end-of-life management of cars. The purpose is to identify key elements in car-scrapping approaches with the potential to meet the following three goals:•containing the environmental damage from end-of-life cars,•improvement of current end-of-life car management from an environmental and resource utilization standpoint, and•fostering manufacturing of scrap-adapted/recycled cars.An attempt is made to analyze how financial resources could be organized for the ELV recycling system. A few suggestions have been made in order to foster attainment of the above-mentioned goals through an extended producer responsibility through requisite market oriented financial support.In short, this paper takes a look at the economic feasibility and ingredients for success of a market for recyclables. It lays emphasis on some kind of transparency at the economic and technical levels.
Incluye bibliografía e índice v.1 -- Geographic patterns & relationships
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