Reducing waste: repair, recondition, remanufacture or recycle?

Abstract

Between 1980 and 1997, municipal waste in OECD countries increased by around 40%. This paper outlines the very real negative effects of this increase and then introduces the two main European Union policies that have been established to address this problem: a landfill directive and legislation on extended producer responsibility (EPR). The paper then describes and compares the four alternative strategies to reducing end-of-life waste within the context of extended producer responsibility: namely repairing, reconditioning, remanufacturing or recycling. It also introduces a more robust definition of remanufacturing, validated by earlier research, which differentiates it from repair and reconditioning. From a consideration of the different factors involved, it concludes that remanufacturing may well be the best strategy. This is because it enables the embodied energy of virgin production to be maintained, preserves the intrinsic 'added value' of the product for the manufacturer and enables the resultant products to be sold 'as new' with updated features if necessary. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Conceptualizing the Circular Economy: An Analysis of 114 Definitions

“…Many authors, e. g. Zhu et al (2010aZhu et al ( , 2010b and Reh (2013), view the various R frameworks as the 'how-to' of CE and thus a core principle of it. We initially chose the 3R framework as the most prominent R framework for our coding (King et al, 2006;Brennan et al, 2015;Ghisellini et al, 2016); it is also at the core of the 2008 Circular Economy Promotion Law of the People's Republic of China (PRC, 2008). Yet we eventually used the 4R framework which is at the core of the European Union (EU) Waste Framework Directive (European Commission, 2008) introducing 'Recover' as the fourth R (the various 'R' are defined in Table 2) since several definitions were found to refer to 'recover'.…”

Impact of Reverse Logistics Product Disposition towards Business Performance in Malaysian E&E Companies

“…This study is important to outline product disposition as part of environmentally proactive approach for reducing the mass of disposables, which are often perceived as a cost-bearing activity with limited benefits. With increasing landfill and environmental control cost, the current situation is not favourable for electronics manufacturers unless products and their constituents are reusable in multiple recovery loops (King et al, 2006). In the case of Malaysia, manufacturers are not proactive in taking advantage of product take back and reprocessing activities as they are considered as cost-oriented services.…”

A Strategic Framework for Working toward Zero Waste Societies Based on Perceptions Surveys

“…For waste collection systems, kerbside door-to-door waste collection systems were supported by most of the waste experts. Most of the experts agreed that there is a need to promote social technologies such as recycling, collaborative consumption, shared ownership, and so on, to reduce waste generation, which is also supported in literature [44,47,61].…”

“…Awareness and education of waste [31,32] Transformative knowledge and willingness to change behaviour [20,33,34] Innovative product design (cradle-to-cradle) [17,[35][36][37] Producer responsibility (take-back scheme) [38][39][40][41] Responsible shopping and consumption practices (sustainable consumption) [25,42,43] Collaborative consumption practices [44][45][46] Extended product lifespan through repair/re-use [47][48][49] Market creation for post-consumer products recirculation [50][51][52][53] Waste management and treatment New infrastructures (bins, collection vehicles, etc.) [54][55][56] Effective waste collection services (kerbside waste collection) [56][57][58] Decentralized recycling and resource recovery centres [59,60] Enabling social technology through community participation (recycling, composting, etc.)…”