Urban mining potentials of university: In-use and hibernating stocks of personal electronics and students’ disposal behaviors

Abstract To evaluate the urban mining potentials of university, we characterize in-use and hibernating stocks of personal electronics possessed by university students in Jiangsu Province, China. Students’ behaviors towards disposing of personal electronics are also explored, including obsolescence, hibernation and recycling. Mainly based on a questionnaire survey, the results firstly show that by per capita, in-use stocks of personal electronics owned by university students are basically higher than average household has in China. Average age of these in-use electronics is between 1.6 and 3.5 years, with mobile phones and tablet personal computers having the shortest in-use time. The lifespan of all personal electronics possessed by university students is shorter than by general residents, indicating their different consuming and disposal habits. Regarding the hibernating stocks, mobile phone has the highest hibernating level of 0.83 unit per capita, yet the level is half of that among university students living within the UK. In regard to disposal behaviors of university students, it is displayed that over a half of replacing practice happened because of the functional damage of old electronics. However, due to reasons like lacking recycling facilities and concerns for information security, 58% of the participants chose to keep these old electronics instead of reuse or recycling them, making university a potential distinct urban mine containing a large amount of valuable resources. We further find that university students have the intention of choosing online recycling platforms to dispose of their obsolete electronics so long as they are fully aware of the importance of recycling behaviors and the platform can provide nice user experience. Several suggestions are finally provided about how to exploit urban mines of university.