ABSTRACT
Electronics waste (e-waste) is an inevitable and unavoidable by-product of the current technological revolution. e-Waste is a collective term, embracing consumer and business appliances, products, components, and accessories nearing the end of their useful life due to obsolescence, malfunction, or exhaustion (e.g., batteries). Common examples of e-waste include personal and mainframe computers, printers, televisions, VCRs, stereos, copiers, and fax machines. There is no standardized denition for e-waste; however, electronics equipment may be dened as those devices whose primary functions are provided by electronic circuitry and components, that is, semiconductor devices (integrated circuits, transistors, and diodes), passive components (resistors, capacitors, and inductors), electro-optical components (cathode ray tubes [CRTs], LEDs, CCDs, lasers, etc.), sensors (transducers and MEM devices), and electronics packaging (printed circuit boards, connectors) (IAER 2002). According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA 2008), Americans own approximately 24 electronic products per household. Some major categories of electronics equipment are listed in Table 22.1.
