Abstract
PurposeRepairing, refurbishing and remanufacturing are three strategies of the Circular Economy (CE), aiming at closing product cycles and maintaining materials and resources in the product cycle as long as possible. This paper analyses the environmental impacts of these three circular end-of-use scenarios (repairing, refurbishing and part remanufacturing) when performed on a common, “non-circular” smartphone. The underlying data used for this paper partly have been result of the Horizon 2020 project sustainablySMART, where circular product concepts have been developed and analysed in detail.MethodsTo analyse the environmental impacts of different circular end-of-use scenarios of smartphones, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is performed. For considering the impact of a smartphone’s first life (e.g. materials, production), an economic allocation is used.Since the goal of the study was to better understand the environmental impacts of processing routes that enable multiple life cycles of a product, allocation according to the economic value is applied instead of applying system expansion. As system expansion provides just an aggregated view of the first and second product life cycles and no decision support at the end of the first life regarding the relevant CE strategy can be given. The economic allocation is based on the ratio between the residual market value and the original price from the scenario’s input stream of smartphones of the respective end-of-use scenario.To reach comparability of the results, a second-use-time-parameter is defined for each scenario. This parameter takes into account that the second use time reaches only a certain share from the average smart phone use time.ResultsThis study shows that through all three circular strategies, a reduction in the investigated impact categories—Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP)—can be achieved.ConclusionsThe analysed end-of-use scenarios repairing and refurbishing show the highest potential for smartphones in terms of Circular Economy, as most of the environmental impacts can be allocated to the device production, and the impact of additional steps to perform CE-strategies (e.g. collection of discarded phones, refurbishing) is rather low.
Highlights
Circular Economy (CE) is a concept aiming at maintaining the value of products, materials and resources in the economy for as long as possible, and generating minimum waste through establishing product cycles (European Commission 2015)
Concluding, the environmental impact categories Global Warming Potential (GWP), Method IPCC 2013 GWP 100a and Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP), Method EPD 2013 are selected to assess the environmental performance in this study
If the refurbishing site is near to the customer, the GWP for transporting is about 6.5%
Summary
Circular Economy (CE) is a concept aiming at maintaining the value of products, materials and resources in the economy for as long as possible, and generating minimum waste through establishing product cycles (European Commission 2015). Repairing is an effective way to reduce the environmental impact of smartphones, by restoring the functionality of the product as soon as it breaks down, and by extending the life of the product. The result of repairing old, but functional devices, is that fewer new devices are needed. Many shops offer smartphone repairs to smartphone users, and lately, a “do it yourself” trend is observable, as repair online tutorials, and providers of tools and spare parts such as IFIXIT are becoming popular
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