Material and Structure analysis and Recycling Processing for Additional Obligation WEEE in 2020

In 2020, EPR items and categories will be changed. Items are to be 50 from 27 and new categories will be determined. New categories could be similar to the WEEE 2 categories. There are 22 new items in EPR items such as navigation, scanner, electric massage apparatus, treadmill and sewing machine, etc. However, we don’t have any research (weight, composition and hazardous material etc.) about these items. It is necessary to analyse the recycling process (methods, standards, etc.) of the obligation WEEE (EPR items) to be recycled after 2020 (22 items to be added) for proper recycling. Therefore, we dismantled22 kinds of items manually (2~3 products each items) to analyze weight, composition, hazardous materials etc. As a result, average composition of items was Metal (32.6%), Plastic (3.69%), Component (24.9%) and Waste (5.6%). With those results, we found out that the most valuable item was treadmill (9,170 won/ea) and the least item was sewing machine (- 6,289 won/ea). It took the longest time to dismantle sewing machine. Moreover, we suggest efficient recycling method which is better: mechanical process or manual process each item. Most item could be recycled by mechanical process, but several items could not be used mechanical process, because of size, composition, structure and hazardous material (i.e., refrigerant). As this research is initial stage for new items, further research is necessary.