Beyond Recovery: Assessing Circularity and Virgin Material Displacement in WEEE Plastics Recycling

Mass-based recovery indicators are widely used to evaluate waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) plastics recycling, but they do not fully show whether recovered plastics can close material loops or displace virgin materials. This study develops a pathway level circularity assessment framework for WEEE plastics recycling, with each pathway defined as one WEEE category and one polymer stream. The case study covers five dominant WEEE categories in China, including refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, televisions, and computers, and three major polymers: polypropylene, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, and polystyrene. This framework also combines life cycle inventory and scenario data with circularity metrics related to recovery quantity, loop-closing potential, and primary resource displacement. Results show substantial differences across WEEE plastics pathways that legal recycling rates varied strongly by product type, from about 11% for air conditioners to over 70% for televisions. The carbon reduction effect of WEEE plastics recycling also ranges from approximately 13% to 77%, indicating that pathways with similar recovery quantities may differ greatly in displacement benefits. Scenario results show that WEEE generation in China could reach 15.42 Mt by 2050, and WEEE plastics recycling could reduce about 2.53 Mt CO2eq in 2050 under a carbon neutral electricity scenario. These results suggest that mass recovery alone may overstate circularity performance. A pathway level metric system that integrates recovery quantity, material quality, substitution potential, and evidence strength can provide a more credible basis for assessing loop-closing and virgin material displacement in WEEE plastics recycling.