A life cycle assessment of waste management: A case study of used ICT products sold in the BoP markets

Abstract

This paper focuses on the investigation of a business model in the BoP markets. Combing the scenario analysis, the life cycle assessment is conducted in the study. After the simulation, the results indicate that the major contributors of environmental impacts are use (75.6%) and disposal of (24.2%) stages. The contribution of transportation and collection stages is less than 0.2%. The Fossil fuel depletion and the Respiratory Inorganic potential were the most significant environmental impact categories after normalization and weighting based on Eco-indicator 99 method. It concludes that the hot environmental spot of a mobile phone occurs in the use of phone. The outcomes could provide important information for promoting BoP business models, including the design of products due to the consideration of sustainability.