Environmental benefits of recycling waste electrical and electronic equipment and spatial distribution

: Investigating the environmental benefits of the recycling and disposal of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and their spatial distribution characteristics can promote the reasonable planning of the recycling system. Based on a market penetration model, this study estimated the recycling capacity of WEEE in 31 provinces of China ’ s mainland in 2020 under the scenario of fully regulated recycling and interprovincial mobility and calculated the environmental benefits, and analyzed the spatial distribution characteristics of environmental benefits by using the spatial autocorrelation method. The results show that: (1) WEEE recycling can save 76.215 million tons of raw material and energy, reduce 189.789 million tons of pollutant emissions, and reduce 2.237 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020; (2) The environmental benefits of WEEE recycling show an overall pattern of “ strong in the east and weak in the west ” ; and (3) There is a positive global spatial correlation between WEEE recycling and environmental benefits, and the local spatial correlation features are as follows: high-high agglomeration in eastern coastal areas, low-low agglomeration in northern provinces, low-high anomaly in Fujian and Jiangxi Provinces, and high-low anomaly in Sichuan Province. (4) Among the top five provinces for environmental benefits of WEEE recycling, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Henan do not form a high- high agglomeration spatial feature. Based on this, the article put forward some policy recommendations, including improving the formal and efficient WEEE recycling system, planning the WEEE recycling system at the regional scale, increasing the utilization of WEEE recycling facilities in provinces with obvious agglomeration advantages, and giving full play to the leading and disseminating role of provinces with high environmental benefits.