Electronic waste recycling and disposal is an effective way to realize the recycling of resources and reduce the environmental pollution. However, the disposal of international electronic waste has serious regional imbalance. The developed countries led by the United States and the European Union produced a large number of electronic waste every year, but only a small part was disposed domestically, while a large amount of electronic waste disposal flowed to developing countries in Asia, Africa and South America. The annual disposal of electronic waste by China accounts for 70%. Given the restrictions on lack of electronic waste regulations and technical conditions in the developing countries, a large number of electronic waste have not been professionally recycled and disposed, which has brought serious environmental and social problems. How to solve the problem of imbalanced electronic waste recycling and the resulting environmental problems is an urgent issue.
Professor Wang Zhaohua, Dr. Zhang Bin and professor Guan Dabo from the University of East Anglia, on the basis of previous work, analyzed the global electronic waste recycling and disposal imbalance problem. The research result "Take Responsibility for Electronic-waste disposal" was published in the Nature Comment column (link: http://www.nature.com/news/take-responsibility-for-electronic-waste-disposal-1.20345). This is the first time Chinese scholars to investigate the electronic waste recycling and disposal topic in Nature.
