Impact of Recycling of Waste Printed Circuit Boards (WPCBs) on Environment and Ecosystem

Past few years have shown the great amount of production of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) because of the rapid development of electronic devices and create several harmful elements for the environmental sysytem. In the domain of WEEE, printed circuit boards (PCBs) are the most requested constituents for all mobile devices (El-Nasr, Abdelbasir, Kamel & Hassan, 2020). Ceramics, metals, and polymeric sections are the specific and significant constituents in PCBs (Bigum, Brogaard & Christensen, 2012). Constant annual output of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) contributes to severe environmental and ecological concerns because it comprised of some dangerous materials which disposed in landfills and cause serious damage to the environment (Birloaga, De Michelis, Ferella, Buzatu & Vegliò, 2013). These damages are of various types such as when e-waste warm-up, it releases many chemicals in the air which damages the atmosphere and when disposed in landfills, these toxic substances seep into ground and affects both land and marine life. Moreover, these toxic e-wastes also causes many disorders in human body when human body get in contact with chemicals release through these dangerous substances. Waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) are one key area of WEEE devices and they are composed of nearly 28% of non-ferrous metals such as aluminum, copper, lead and nickel etc. That’s why, the specific physical and chemical composition of WPCBs has created difficulty in their recycle process.

Huang, Guo and Xu (2009) stated that approximately 30 percent of the mass of wasted PCBs (WPCBs) contained a broad variety of essential metals including gold, platinum, copper and silver and, moreover, dangerous matels such as zinc, lead and brominated fire inhibitors. If such WPCBs are treated improperly, poisonous chemicals will cause extreme environmental issues and the depletion of numerous highly valuable metals. Recycling of waste PCBs thus improved exceptional concerns for the management of waste and the recovery of useful materials (Fogarasi, Imre-Lucaci, Egedy, Imre-Lucaci & Ilea, 2015; Bigum et al., 2012; Huang et al., 2009). Throughout the past few decades, the unchecked recycling practices of waste printed circuit boards (WPCBs) have generated significant negative environmental impacts (Chen et al., 2016). Crude recycling practices are currently banned by nearly all countries all over the world. Traditional recycling methods for WPCBs (such as simply grinding, filtering, and pyrolysis) (Li & Xu, 2010) cannot satisfy the demands of producing high value added goods and sustainable economic growth. The potential development and market for e-waste recycling will be further extent and lead to enhancement of WPCBs recycling (Wang & Xu, 2015).