typical household EEE

Flows of typical household EEE

This is a brief overview of the linear and circular value chains describes the flows of a typical household EEE.

When a new product is purchased by a household (P1), it would either be used straight away (P2) or hoarded (P3) for future use. 

For a used product, there are various scenarios after the use phase. A product may be hoarded (P3) if the household decides to stop using it right now but maybe use it again in the future. A product may also be mismanaged by the household which goes directly into the municiple solid waste (MSW) stream (P9).  

For scenarios that are circular, a used product can be re-sold (P4) by the household, or repaired (P5) if broken, or return to local authorities (P3) for repairing (P5), refurbishing (P6), or recovering components or materials (P7). However, not all collected used products or recovered components or materials are reusable, of which will be eventually ended up as MSW (P9).

The most profound challenge is that data for material flow and activities of each process from P4 to P9 remain unknown. 

More details on the reverse options including reuse and resale, repair and maintenance, remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling can be found in the links below.