Service Lifetime, Storage Time, and Disposal Pathways of Electronic Equipment: A Swiss Case Study

Esther Thiébaud (†Müller), Lorenz M. Hilty, Mathias Schluep, Rolf Widmer and Martin Faulstich

Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2018, vol. 22, issue 1, 196-208

Abstract: Product lifetime is an essential aspect of dynamic material flow analyses and has been modeled using lifetime distribution functions, mostly average lifetimes. Existing data regarding the lifetime of electronic equipment (EE) are based on diverging definitions of lifetime as well as different temporal and regional scopes. After its active use, EE is often not disposed of immediately, but remains in storage for some time. Specific data on the share of EE that is stored and the time they remain in storage are scarce. This article investigates the service lifetime, storage time, and disposal pathways of ten electronic device types, based on data from an online survey complemented by structured interviews. We distinguish between new and secondhand devices and compute histograms, averages, and medians of the different lifetimes and their change over time. The average service lifetime varies from 3.3Â years for mobile phones to 10.8Â years for large loudspeakers, the average storage time from 0.8Â years for flat panel display televisions to 3.6Â years for large loudspeakers. Most service lifetime histograms are positively skewed and show substantial differences among device types. The storage time histograms, being more similar to one another, indicate that the storage behavior is similar for most device types. The data on disposal pathways show that a large proportion of devices are stored and reused before they reach the collection scheme.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12551

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:inecol:v:22:y:2018:i:1:p:196-208

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1088-1980

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Industrial Ecology is currently edited by Reid Lifset

More articles in Journal of Industrial Ecology from Yale University
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().