AUTHORS: Anders S. G. Andrae
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ABSTRACT: Improved material efficiency as a means of improving product sustainability scoring is of large interest. Here a theoretical idea of how collection rate, reliability and simple refurbishing affect the life cycle score is presented. There is some misconception that repair, refurbishment and remanufacturing would bring huge benefits in bringing down the environmental impact and amounts of electrical and electronic waste. Here is suggested that longevity of the first new product is superior to other operations such as repair, reuse, and upgrade strategies under the present low collection rates. However, refurbishing a product with spare parts might be interesting environmentally if the collection rate is very high. The ideas are demonstrated for a typical smartphone via simplified attributional Life Cycle Assessment. It seems like massively increasing the collection rate - and designing resilient smartphones - would systemically be very effective and efficient for reaching a high material efficiency. The answer is not to refurbish, repair or replace, instead the answer is to use the first new product as long as technically possible.
KEYWORDS: Circular economy; life cycle assessment; collection rate; refurbish; reliability; smartphone
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