In this talk, I’ll focus on the inner loops
of the butterfly diagram.
Those are the smaller loops about maintenance,
reuse and remanufacturing.
The smaller the loop, the greater the profitability
of the overall system.
For instance, if I repair a product instead
of having it recycled, I’m saving a lot
of resources and energy.
So keeping a product at its highest value for
as long as possible makes sense,
both from an economic and an ecological perspective.
So this means, that it’s worthwhile to postpone
the moment that a product is recycled, for
as long as possible.
And we often joke that recycling is “the last
resort option.”
The inner loops of the butterfly diagram are
essentially about product life extension:
making products last longer.
Basically there are two ways to extend the
life of products.
The first is to keep them in use for longer,
and the second is to give products a second life,
a third life, fourth life, etcetera.
So in order to keep products in use longer,
the first option,
it makes sense to design them to be really
durable.
And we can also use maintenance and upgrades
to achieve the same goal.
Look at the case study of Fairphone, for instance.
Their latest phone was designed to be maintained
and upgraded.
If we want to give products a second or third
life,
which is the second option for product life
extension, there are other strategies:
repair, refurbishment and remanufacture.
You can repair a product yourself (and we’ll
be trying this later) or you can have it repaired.
Refurbishment is a more extensive process,
where products are repaired and components
replaced, in order to bring it back to a satisfactory
working condition.
And refurbishment is always done in a commercial
enterprise.
For instance, you can now buy refurbished
smart phones.
Remanufacture is an even more extensive process.
Here, products are totally disassembled into
components, and those components are brought
back to the original quality, and
then used to manufacture new products that
are identical to the original products.
So you can see that if you look at repair,
refurbishment and remanufacture, the process
becomes increasingly complex, involving more
and more product disassembly and reassembly.
But all three activities result in giving
products a second life.
Now is product life extension always a good
idea?
In general I would say yes, but not for instance
if new products come along that are radically
more energy efficient, making it better, from
an ecological perspective, to replace your old
energy guzzling product rather than using
it longer.
Also, product life extension may be difficult
for many kinds of packaging. So there are exceptions.
