Electronic Waste Management and Recycling: A Multitiered Network Equilibrium Framework for E-Cycling

In this paper, we focus on a problem of increasing environmental concern – that of electronic waste – and we present an integrated framework for the modeling of the management of such waste, which includes recycling. We describe the behavior of the various decision-makers, consisting of the sources of electronic waste, the recyclers, the processors, as well as the consumers associated with the demand markets for the distinct products. We construct the e-cycling network model, derive the governing equilibrium conditions and establish the variational inequality formulation, whose solution yields the material flows as well as the prices. We provide qualitative properties of the equilibrium pattern and propose a computational procedure, which is then applied to solve several illustrative numerical examples.