Design for Disassembly in Electronic Devices: A Review

Electronic waste (e-waste) is a growing environmental and resource-recovery challenge. This paper draws on ten sources to examine how product design influences the disassembly and recycling of electronic devices. The sources include journal articles, conference papers, a preprint, and a thesis published between 2010 and 2026, and all of them were assessed through their abstracts only. The reviewed literature suggests that early design choices strongly influence how much material can be recovered at the end of a device’s life. One conference study reports a trade-off between making devices easy to repair manually and easy to recycle mechanically. Intelligent algorithms and robotic systems show promise for automated disassembly, but the disassembly-planning study reviewed was tested on only one phone model, and a design-for-recycling review notes that standardized recyclability indicators are still missing. Future work should test automated disassembly on a wider range of phone designs and examine whether sealed or waterproofed enclosures make disassembly harder.