Reducing Health and Ecological Risks by Using WEEE as Secondary Sources for Critical Raw Materials

As a result of the evolution of the industrial production of electrical and electronic equipment and the increase of the population demand for these products, the amount of waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE, e-waste) has increased substantially in the last decades. The paper makes a brief analysis of the risks that poor WEEE management can generate for the environment and human health and offers some solutions for a sustainable WEEE management model. One of these refers to the use of WEEE as a secondary source for critical metals, such as cobalt, lithium etc., which can be obtained from used batteries, by specific pyrometallurgical or (bio) hydrometallurgical processes.