Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Earth Sciences and Environment, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia; School of Technology Management and Logistics, College of Business, Universiti Utara Malaysia, 06010, Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia
  • 2 Department of Earth Sciences and Environment, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia; Centre for Tropical Climate Change System, Institute of Climate Change, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600, UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia. Electronic address: mhmarlia@ukm.edu.my
J Environ Manage, 2020 Jun 15;264:110495.
PMID: 32250915 DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.110495

Abstract

Studies on sustainable management of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (or e-waste) have gained increasing attention from researchers around the world in recent years, with investigations into various aspects of e-waste management were investigated. Studies on e-waste generation by previous papers have been reviewed to provide an overview of the current research progress and recommendations for future research. The relevant existing studies were collected from various databases. Using content analysis, three main aspects of the existing studies were evaluated: the distribution and trends of the publications, the scope and boundaries of the studies, and the current research practices and research applications. Although there was a significant increasing trend of the amount of research on the evaluation of e-waste generation, however, the number of publications based on the countries of origin was still small. Another limitation was found related to the differences in the selection of research subjects and the level of analysis resulted in variations in the scopes and boundaries of the existing studies. Various other research areas were investigated further based on their research findings, but the analysis of various methodological aspects was complicated due to the increasing number of newly developed methodologies and the lack of comprehensive and up-to-date reviews on this research area. Additionally, there was also a need to evaluate emerging and/or older technology, which led electrical appliances to be overlooked. We found that comprehensive and up-to-date reviews of the methodological aspects of e-waste generation are still lacking. Based on the research gaps and limitations discussed, recommendations for future research were made.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.