2020 International Conference on Intelligent Engineering and Management (ICIEM)

Artificial Intelligence in Waste Electronic and

Electrical Equipment Treatment: Opportunities and
Challenges
Vernika Agarwal Shivam Goyal Sanskriti Goel
Amity International Business School Amity International Business School Amity International Business School
Amity University Amity University Amity University
Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India
vernika.agarwal@gmail.com shiam602.lucknow@gmail.com sanskritigoel2288@gmail.com

Abstract—The growth of the e-waste in developing litter by 2016 in contrast to the current level of 12.5 lakh
economies is putting a lot of pressure on the government bodies (MT) annually ( 2014). The waste mostly contains toxic
to implement a proper system for effective management of the waste, rare metals from earth, etc. which are very hazardous
discarded electronic products. It is also essential to monitor the and harmful for human health and the loss of natural
progress as well as the failures to ensure well-informed resources [3]. The segregation of E-Waste is very important
decisions are implemented for e-waste management. Although, and when done with proper safety then it is more reliable. In
there exist many platforms exist to deal with the e-waste issues, the past years Artificial Intelligence has helped in the same
but the concept of Artificial Intelligence can aid in faster and which in fact has helped in lowering the human risk to life
more effective e-waste management. The concept of Artificial
and diseases. In the present paper we have done a review of
Intelligence is relatively a newer concept which utilized various
papers in which Artificial Intelligence in used as the main
techniques for segregation into recycling of e-waste. The
proposed study focuses on reviewing the past years papers tool for the segregation of E-Waste. The study from various
from year 2015 to present for understanding the role of papers also illustrates the that scope of AI in the coming time
Artificial Intelligence in e-waste management. The paper also is very effective.
illustrates the scope of Artificial Intelligence in the
management of e-waste in the coming time. In this paper we
have employed Data Extraction and Synergy methodology to
collect the data and write the review of papers by doing the
analysis through graphs on the same basis. The opportunity
associated with this is that the use of computational techniques
is highly effective in the segregation of e-waste and the
techniques also provide an effective vital routine in solving the
heuristic problems related to E-waste in an effective manner.
The novelty of the paper lies in explaining the impact and
scope of Artificial Intelligence in the future and as well as in
the present.

Keywords— WEEE, Artificial Intelligence, Challenges,

Opportunities, e-waste
I. INTRODUCTION
The electronic market is aggressively expanding in the
developing nations. The demand for electronic products and
their consumption is growing at a rapid rate among
consumers. It is Basically due to rapid changes in
technology, dropping prices due to competition among
competitors and changing habits of consumers to acquire
new gadgets. [1]. All the electronic Products which have
completed their shelf life are normally known as electronic
waste.. The most e-waste producing states in India are given
in Fig 1. It can be seen that Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra
severely lacks proper management of e-waste. The
implementation of the actual disposal of e-waste has been an
important and a concerning topic for everyone be it
government or a consumer. [2]. As the report regarding
associated chamber of commerce (ASSOCHAM) states,
India is upcoming nation which stands at fifth position of all
the developing nations on global level and stands at second
place in Asia and produces electronic litter with a rising rate
of 25% every year; it stands at 18.5 lakh (MT) of electronic
Fig. 1. Top cities in India producing e-litter. (Source:
https://swachhindia.ndtv.com/india-world-top-5-e-waste-producer-
assocham-nec-report-21415/)
Therefore, the main reason to do this study is to find the
scope of Artificial Intelligence in E-Waste segregation. The
motive is also to compare the computation tools which the
other countries are incorporating in segregation of E-Waste.
Hence, major focus of the current study is to address the
following objectives.
• To contemplate the Artificial Intelligence
Technique in treatment of E-Waste.
• To scrutinize the opportunities and challenges of
Artificial Intelligence in treatment of E-Waste.
The goal of the following paper is to collect data and
contemplate the various computational techniques being used
to segregate E-Waste. The methodology adopted for the
same is Data Extraction and Synergy. Briefly, our major
research questions in this field are:
1. How is AI classified in e-waste management?

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2020 International Conference on Intelligent Engineering and Management (ICIEM)
2. Which paradigms and issues of e-waste management are
addressed in literature?
• Collection
• Segregation
• Recycling
3. What are the AI techniques that are used as solution
approach?
4. Which real-time case studies are investigated?
Further, the paper has been organized in the following
manner: In Section 2, the research methodology has been
described. A detailed analysis and classification of the
reviewed articles have been presented in Section 3. The
results and opportunities from the potential research gaps
have been elaborated in Section 4 for further research.
Finally, Section 5 includes the conclusion and future
research.
II. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research methodology involves two steps:
A. Collection Methodology
All the materials collected during this literature review
and the collection approach for the same is discussed in this
section. The focus was given on research papers published
between 2015-2020, which comprises the articles,
conference proceedings, books available on the internet,
including Web of Science, Google Scholar, and Scopus by
using different combinations of keywords. The search
procedure was executed in multiple steps with different
combinations of ‘Artificial Intelligence’, ‘E-waste’,
‘Artificial Intelligence in E-waste’, ‘WEEE’ as keywords.
Moreover, the papers were selected based on their relevance.
It is by default that the search engine database is updated
frequently due to acceptance of new publications, so the
collection of papers is taken in a short period of time.
B. Search & Selection Criteria and Data Extraction &
Synthesis Methodology
As discussed above, the collection of papers was done,
and a total of 50 papers were listed down for the review
research. After the papers were collected, the selection of
Fig. 3. Country wise analysis.
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criteria was decided for the review research, which led to the
final set of papers that were 28 papers out of 50 papers. The
papers selected were based on the criteria decided. This led
to the extraction of data from the papers selected as per the
requirements of the review research in terms of the criteria
selected. After the useful data was extracted from the papers
the data was synthesized in an Excel sheet. All the relevant
data needed for the research was compiled in the excel sheet.
The data complied was further used for making analysis
through various graphs and charts to draw conclusions and
further research.
III. DATA ANALYSIS
In this section based on the research methodology given
in section II, we present an analysis of the papers.
Fig. 2. Number of Papers published.
As discussed earlier, the present study aims to analyse the
recent publication in the field of AI and e-waste
management. Although several papers were published
individually in both the fields. However, only few
researchers have published the application of AI in e-waste
management as shown in Fig. 2 [4]-[30]. It can be seen from
Fig. 2 shows that more than 50% papers were published from
the year 2016 and 2019. Since the application of AI in
optimization planning has progressed over the recent years. It
can also be observed that the maximum papers are published
in Elsevier. Further, a lot of research in the field of AI
applications for e-waste management can be seen in Indian
context as seen in Fig. 3. The major contributes being [4]-[6].
A review of various e-waste strategies for Indian context is
presented in the paper [7].
2020 International Conference on Intelligent Engineering and Management (ICIEM)
As AI is a very broad category comprising of a number level. The authors have not considered any particular area
of techniques, we can see from the fig 4 that Iot and Deep and their methods can be applicable globally. Recently, the
learning are major fields in which work was carried out [8]. paper by [9] analysed the application of deep learning and
Most of the techniques which are applied work at a global ANN techniques into segregation of waste.

Fig. 4. Classification of AI techniques in e-waste

Fig. 5. . Segregation of e-waste is another essential field in which AI

can be widely used specifically the image processing
techniques.

IV. POTENTIAL AREA OF RESEARCH

It can be further stated from the research than AI helps in
e- waste treatment which will not only help in segregation of
e- waste but will also help in further classification of e- waste
to bio-degradable and non-biodegradable categories. Till date
only 20% of the e- waste is processed, with help of AI e-
waste treatment process will speed up. Also, AI helps in
prevention of contact of humans from the toxic substance
released while processing the e- waste.

V. CONCLUSION
With the rapid growth of the electronic sector, the
problem of e-waste is becoming a major concern for the
government. Although the government is undertaking several
schemes to encounter these problems still there is a huge gap
in the implementation of the same. In addition, the latest
global trend has seen a rise in the concept of Artificial
Intelligence for the management of e-waste. In the present
Fig. 6. E-waste fields in which AI is implemented.
study, we have tried to review the past years papers from
year 2015 to present for understanding the role of Artificial
Intelligence in e-waste management.
On analysing the fig. 5, it can be seen that the most of the
papers have applied AI in all phases of e-waste management,
followed by collection of the e-waste using AI techniques is REFERENCES
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2020 International Conference on Intelligent Engineering and Management (ICIEM)
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