Taking stock for repair and refurbishing: A review of harvesting of spare parts from electrical and electronic products

Abstract

A circular economy (CE) calls for the value of materials and products to be maintained and recovered through narrowing, closing, and slowing loops. However, there remain challenges in capturing value through reuse of components in refurbished and repaired products. In this paper, we provide an overview of the research and practice of harvesting spare parts from used and waste electrical and electronic equipment (white goods and consumer electronic products). Through a literature review and case studies of Norway, Sweden, and California, we provide an overview of drivers and barriers for spare part harvesting. Applying a stakeholder value mapping framework, we identify the key stakeholders involved in spare part harvesting and map the values captured, missed, and destroyed to identify opportunities for increased value retention. Finally, we suggest further refinements for policy to upscale spare part harvesting in light of CE goals and objectives. K E Y W O R D Scircular economy, industrial ecology, parts reuse, spare parts, stakeholder value mapping, waste electrical and electronic equipment INTRODUCTIONA circular economy (CE) aims to retain the value of materials and products as long as possible, and electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) are identified as a key product value chain by the European Commission (European Commission, 2020). Blomsma and Tennant (2020) argue that CE is dominated by approaches that focus on materials and products and propose another important intermediate state of resources: parts. This insight is key as product lifetimes can be extended through repair and maintenance, upgrading, refurbishment, and remanufacturing (Cooper, 2005;Nasr et al., 2018)-which typically require parts. A product part has a higher value than materials and is often an assembly of components having a specified function, usually as part of a complex product (Lu et al., 2018).Access to spare parts has been noted as a significant barrier constraining upscaling of repair and refurbishment (Jaeger-Erben et al., 2021;Nazlı, 2021;Svensson-Hoglund et al., 2021). Spare parts ("parts") can be: (1) new original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts;(2) third-party newly manufactured aftermarket parts; and (3) parts harvested from products, directly reused or refurbished. Developments in additive manufacturing have been presented as a solution to this bottleneck (

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