A Baseline Input—Output Model with Environmental Accounts (IOEA) Applied to E-Waste Recycling

Abstract

This article reports the authors’ efforts to construct a baseline input—output (IO) model with environmental accounts for use in modeling geographically specific e-waste recycling systems. The authors address conceptual and practical issues that arise when recyclable end-of-life (EOL) commodities and related activities are incorporated into the traditional IO model including: (1) shortcomings of existing industry and commodity accounts that do not explicitly represent recycling activities and recyclable EOL products; (2) accounting challenges related to flows of EOL products observed mainly in physical volumes; and (3) valuing EOL products whose transactions prices vary widely. These three issues complicate the incorporation of EOL commodities within the conventional IO framework. The authors present a way to record the transactions of EOL products in both physical and monetary terms in an IO model with environmental accounts. Specifically, the authors present the case of e-waste recycling for the Atlanta metropolitan area (AMA) with an empirically based hypothetical scenario.