Assessment and modeling of E-waste generation based on growth rate from different telecom companies in the State of Kuwait

Abstract

The present work assesses the production rate of cell phone e-waste in Kuwait by comparing the number of clients in three telecommunication service providers like Zain, Ooredoo, and Viva in the state of Kuwait over a period of 7 years from 2008 to 2015. An online survey was conducted to evaluate the growth in the number of clients in three cell phone companies, and the data analysis was carried out using statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) software. The prediction of the growth percentage of the number of clients in each telecommunication company was analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) test and followed by the regression model. The study shows that there is an increase in the number of clients in all three companies (Zain, Ooredoo, and Viva) between year 2008 and 2015, and it was estimated that approximately 7.9 million cell phone users would be achieved in the first quarter of 2015. Based on this predicted number of cell phone users, the production of e-waste would be 3 kt per year with an average growth of 12.7%.