Ecosysteme
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Welcome!


This platform allows you to consult and download the Life Cycle Inventories database modelling the end-of-life of household Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE).

About Ecosystem

ecosystem is a not-for-profit organisation accredited by the French Authorities. In accordance with French and European regulations, ecosystem carries out a mission of public interest, i.e. the deployment throughout France of a system for collection, depollution and recycling of waste household and professional electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), lamps and small fire extinguishers.

This Node gathers LCI datasets for products under the scope of ecosystem activities.

Ecosystem website

Partnership

For 3 years, ecosystem (merging of Eco-systèmes and Récylum), accompanied by Bleu Safran (consultant specialized in LCA applied to waste management), has developed a Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) database on WEEE management. This project has been co-financed by ADEME (French environmental agency).

Project leaders:

Accompanied by:

Co-financed by:

About this WEEE LCI Database

This innovative database provides unprecedented possibilities to the producers of Electrical and Electronic Equipment to integrate resource efficiency in their eco-design strategies. The database, compliant with ILCD entry-level and ISO14040-14044 requirements, covers all categories of household appliances as well as certain professional equipment, as defined in the WEEE Directive (2012/19/EU).

The equipment categories covered in the database are:
  • For Household equipment: Large Cooling Household equipment, Large Household-Non Cold equipment, Small household equipment, Flat Screens and Lamps
  • For Professional equipment: Self-Contained Emergency Lighting, Small Professional equipment (Medical, Building, Industry, Research), Large Professional equipment (Medical, Building, Industry, Research), Professional Lighting equipment, Professional Inverters, Electrical Motors for industrial applications, Water Fountains LCI, Professional cold cabinets (with compressor), Heat Pumps and Air-conditioners (fluid filler < 2kg), Rooftop Air-conditioners.
This database is also available through the Life-cycle Data Network of the Joint Research Centre.

This database contributes to solve several challenges faced by producers to adopt a circular approach, from an environmental assessment perspective, notably by:
  • Reducing the dissymmetry between production and end-of-life modelling, in terms of reliability and granularity of the data used.
  • Facilitating the modelling of a life-cycle stage which is generally not managed by material producers nor product manufacturers, and involves multi-step and multi-actor pathways.
  • Taking into account, on the basis of field data, the environmental benefits of material and energy recovery.
For this purpose, the LCI have been developed at the scale of a couple material/WEEE category (e.g.: LCI of the end-of-life of 1kg of steel in large household appliances, LCI of the end-of-life of 1kg of glass in lamps, etc.), and cover all the operations from waste collection to final destinations of the processed fractions (recycling, energy recovery, landfilling). Thereby, the database allows to take the complete recycling chain into account and to adapt the assessment specifically to the product design, without requiring any additional hypothesis or settings than the product material composition. The specific data needed, from the producer’s perspective, as well as the scale of analysis can thus be consistent between the different life-cycle stages linked to material efficiency: raw material extraction, manufacturing, end-of-life.

As regards the benefits of recycling and energy recovery, two variants of LCI have been produced:
  1. Including the benefits of recycling and energy recovery (system expansion approach).
  2. Not including them (cut-off approach).
To achieve this modelling, data of different sources have been gathered, cross-checked and peer-reviewed by independent experts to feed the material flow analysis:
  • Sampling programmes and WEEE material composition analysis.
  • Recurrent batch assessments on output fractions, for treatment plants covering more than 90% of WEEE volumes managed by ecosystem
  • Traceability on the downstream acceptors of the output fractions.
  • Questionnaires to treatment plants on residues or mixed fractions compositions, energy consumptions and emissions.
These data sources have been cross-checked by ecosystem, the developer (Bleu Safran), and peer-reviewed by recognized and independent experts (Solinnen, Büro für Umweltchemie). The methodology and data sources are clarified in the Modelling principles report that can be found in each LCI or directly via the section “Sources”. A User guide is also at your disposal in the same section.

Important files to consider

  • User Guide of the LCI (PDF)
  • Methodological report (PDF)
  • External review report (PDF)

Please note that those documents are also available in the folder Source.

Other documents such as the LCI under CSV Format (Excel) and a Mapping of elementary flows and associated UUID generated after conversion of the LCI from SimaPro ILCD format (Excel) are also available in the folder Source.

Once downloaded, how to visualize the datasets?

Data access and use

Datasets can be used free of charge and also distributed to third parties (if unmodified). For more details please refer to the General Terms of Use.

Datasets are also directly available in the database of some LCA software (SimaPro developed by PRé Consultants, EIME developed by LCIE, others under discussion)