Enhancing the Sustainability of the Electronics in the Automotive Sector in the Context of Circular Economy Through a Decision-Making Framework

The automotive industry is evolving towards a more circular and sustainable paradigm, driven by the increasing climate change concern and the European Commission's emphasis on critical raw materials (CRMs) recovery from automotive electronics. Currently, industry decision-makers focus on recovering key components for reusing purposes and specific materials, such as metals and plastics. Their approach is mostly addressing the economic benefits of recycling and meeting regulatory requirements, but often overlooking CRMs and other valuable materials lost in conventional shredding. The lack of methodologies advising on the economic feasibility, environmental and social impacts in electronic components disassembly and recycling is hindering the possibility to recover valuable and rare materials and to design more circular oriented components. This work introduces a comprehensive advisory framework designed to enhance product circularity and sustainability, specifically emphasizing the beginning (BoL) and end-of-life (EoL) of a product. It includes an innovative methodology to support the different actors along the automotive value chain in their decision-making process. This approach guides them through a structured and predefined decision-making flow, offering a range of tools and recommendations to facilitate the implementation of circularity and sustainability performance improvements in electronic components. The framework's effectiveness has been validated through the implementation of a software advisory module meant to support decision-making processes for various stakeholders, including car manufacturers and recycling experts. The methodology deployment and the interaction with the different stakeholders involved in the BoL and EoL phases provided useful information to confirm or reshape some of the methodology designed parts, considering criteria such as data availability. By implementing this framework, companies can adopt a comprehensive approach to incorporate circular practices and boost the sustainability of automotive electronics, positioning themself at the forefront in the transition toward a more responsible global economy.