The recycling system applies the Internet and smart technologies to monitor and manage the recycled products (such as electronics and bio-waste) and make consumers recycle online. Therefore, it is demanded to develop an ICT-based recycling system, effectively incentivising consumers to recycle their waste products. Further, due to the lack of sufficient ICT (information and communication technologies) supports, the rewards cannot be recorded into the consumer’s account (such as instant display of their coupons/points spent), which greatly affects consumer’s experience and restricts their participation in recycling activities. However, the recycling operation is unable to be conducted through the Internet, and hence, consumers are required to go to a designated location where they might be not aware in order to retrieve their rewards. For example, the intelligent bin developed by ReciclaGana ( (accessed on 8 June 2022)) employs the electronic bar-code to track the product recycled. įew recycling bins provide the function for consumers to recycle products without human assistance/interference to optimise the schedule and efficiency of waste collection. According to the survey conducted by the European Erasmus student project, more than 50% of consumers were concerned about electronic waste recycling, while they do not commit to recycling electronics because there is insufficient information on access to the e-waste collection point and a concomitant lack of awareness of the environmental problems related to the product. According to the findings of the European Commission DG Environmental Organization, most people did not attempt to recycle their end-of-life (EoL) electronic devices due to a lack of responsibility and awareness. However, only 35% of electronic wastes are collected and recycled per year, where 12–15% of mobile phones and tablets are properly recycled, lower than the recycling rate of general e-waste. Today, around 700 million electrical and electronic devices are idle in households in Europe if all these devices are collected and recycled, approximately 14,920 tons of gold, silver, copper, palladium, cobalt, and lithium would be recovered, worth more than 1 billion euros, which will make a large amount of secondary materials available for use. The system has been successfully validated via illustrating recycling, eco-shopping, and eco-incentives in public places (e.g., schools, urban cultural centres), as well as promoting the consumer’s participation in recycling and enhancing their environmental awareness, which proved the successful implementation of the novel contribution of this research. A case study is conducted, including online tracking of the recycling process and then implementing incentive activities with the eco-credits and eco-costs. To develop the recycling and eco-shopping system, multiple information-communication technologies are utilised, such as hardware digital monitoring/control, Internet-based communication services, traceability media (bar-code and QR code), user identity recognition and privacy protection, and multi-language supports. Both eco-costs and eco-credits are recorded in the consumer’s eco-account. The consumer is informed about the eco-costs through eco-shopping, which are displayed on a payment receipt. The eco-costs reflect the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle. Consumers are awarded the eco-credits, which can be used for various forms of eco-incentives, such as shopping discounts, tree planting donations, and exchanges for theatre and museum tickets. The recycling of EoL products is conducted based on information-communication technologies to remotely monitor and manage the recycled products (such as electronics or household bio-wastes), enabling consumers’ recycling process over the Internet. To incentivise consumers’ recycling/reusing behaviours and enhance their environmental awareness, a novel ICT-based system for recycling and eco-shopping has been developed in this paper. Recently, there has been a growing effort to reduce the environmental impact of products throughout their life cycle, particularly during the end-of-life (EoL) stage.
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