By the end of this year, there will be more than 100 million personal computers and more than 500 million mobile phones being disposed globally. Thanks to growth of middle-class population around the world, demand for industrial product has gained momentum throughout the world especially in emerging market. At the same time, the life span for these products has been reduced gradually over the years due to consumer behavior. For example, people in developed countries tend to change personal computer as fast as 4 years of average lifetime, while those in developing countries change in 5–6 years of average lifetime (Yu et al. 2010).
According to the UNEP, 20–50 million tons of e-waste is generated each year. The amount is estimated to double in the next decade. Moreover, generation of e-waste is growing three times faster than any other type of municipal waste on global level. The rapid growth of e-waste in the last few decades is mainly because of prosperous growth in electronic and electrical industries and the fast advancement of technologies. Consequently, the quick growing development affects consumption habits. Life cycle of products gets shorter and results in escalating e-waste. This has resulted in replacing electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) products which still have a long life span. Furthermore, majority of the e-waste are ended up in landfills or incinerators. In the USA, about 75–80 % of e-waste ready for EoL management ended up in landfills (Kahhat et al. 2008). It has now become one of the fastest growing waste components in municipal solid waste stream, and it could be a source of hazardous waste that adds to environmental burden and human health risk (Gaidajis et al. 2010; Ongondo et al. 2011; Terazono et al. 2006; Widmer et al. 2005; UNE Programme 2007a, b). To make things worse, 50 % more resources are being extracted than our planet can replenish today (Almond et al. 2012; UNE Protection 2012).
What does human do with millions of obsolete products? Most of the obsolete products are being recycled in one way or another. However, the methods are unsystematic, not effective (in terms of energy and cost), and hazardous due to mishandling and end up as landfills. This is because the team who is responsible for the recycling does not have the knowledge of the product and has no recycling process, no support of advance technology, no established recycling channel, and no connection with the manufacturer. All the reasons mentioned above are critical criteria for an effective recovery process which can retrieve values from the end-of-life (EoL) product. Therefore, regulatory and manufacturer have been racing to propose product and process to counter this trend, which the trend supports toward sustainable manufacturing.
To save the resources and serve the planet better, an effective solution is proposed to predict the life cycle status of the product, determine the product condition, and design a management system to handle it at EoL stage.

Definitions

• EoL product condition is referring to the state or quality of the product at the point of return. Usually, there are few critical parameters which can indicate the product condition, and this has to be determined during the stage where the product is designed and manufactured by the manufacturer. For most mechanical parts, the remaining life can be estimated by comparing the date of manufactured and predicted life span modeled by the manufacturer from reliability test. The information such as wear-out life also gives hint to predict remaining useful life. This parameter shall be able to be measured accurately and precisely by certain equipment. Some manufacturers even design or customize this equipment in order to achieve certain efficiency when measuring the EoL product condition. The measured parameters could be used to simulate the EoL product condition by using certain model and assumptions. Then, user can categorize the product according to the product condition.
The silver lining behind the cloud of problems are journals which develop methods to quantify the value of returned products – in the form of either recovery value or EoL value. In a case study on television sets, product and environmental costs (converted from carbon emissions) are summed to attain an overall product life cycle cost (PLCC). This value is then put through Weibull analysis by means of historical data. Ultimately, it allows users to compare between making a new product and reusing a returned piece (Anityasari et al. 2005). While the formulation is comprehensive, the method falls short in developing quantity-based comparison between new production and other recovery options like remanufacturing and recycling.
• EoL value refers to the quality value at EoL phase and includes technical condition, remaining useful life, and material selling price.
• Recovery value is the value gained from EoL treatment as compared to making new product. It includes cost savings, GHG emission savings, and technical condition savings.
• Residue value is the remains value after recoverable value has been retrieved from EoL product.
• Product recovery is the process of restoring EoL product to a former and better state or condition. A product that can recover certain range of value at EoL stage is called product recovery value.
• Product recovery cost is the cost required to recover EoL product, and this cost varies depending on the product condition. Both the product recovery value and product recovery cost are determined to support product recovery decision.
• Product recovery decision is the decision-making process of selecting the best recovery option. The recovery options are, namely, reuse, remanufacture, recycle, and dispose (incinerate).

End-of-Life Product Recovery

End-of-life (EoL) product recovery enables an organization to help reduce the environmental impacts of their products while maintaining profit margin. Some common ways of treating EoL product are landfill and recycling. However, these recovery treatments are more for short-term solution because they achieve low-value recovery efficiency. Recovery treatments such as landfill and recycle are usually adopted by an organization who intends to solve the EoL product without early planning during the product design or manufacture. Therefore, it is proven that high-efficiency product recovery can be achieved when EoL product treatment is being considered or planned during the product development stage. In consequence, product manufacturer has to be involved starting from the birth of the product till EoL stage. In other term, it is called design for EoL product recovery.
In order to design for EoL product recovery, it is important to understand the possible types of EoL products, which can be categorized according to the product condition. Based on the EoL product condition, one can determine the product recovery options appropriately.
The objective of this topic is to:

• Describe the possible types of EoL products
• Evaluate the product recovery options
• Identify new product information to support product recovery types of EoL product return

Classification of EoL Product Condition

Returning of EoL products is acquired from production rejects, supply chain return, end-of-lease return, warranty return, and consumer return:

i. Production rejects are the defective products that might be caused by manufacturing process or assembly errors. Thereby, these erroneous parts are not suitable for further assembly into product.
ii. Supply chain return is the unsold products returned from distributor or retailer. It might cause product obsolescence due to excess purchase or shipment because of errors in sales estimation.
iii. End-of-lease return refers to the returning of leased product when the lease schedules are expiring. At the end of the leasing period, the old equipment is often replaced by a new unit and usually comes with maintenance service in the contract.
iv. Warranty return refers to the return of products by consumers due to defects in material and workmanship or fail units within a certain period of time specified by the manufacturer or retailer.
v. Consumer return mainly refers to the end of product usage. Consumers might return the old unit as trade-in when they purchase a new unit for replacement. In other case, consumer sells it as raw material to the third-party waste recycler.

Product condition of the EoL product is classified based on the types of return. The products are mainly categorized in unused, predictable, and unpredictable status as shown in Table 1.