Used product take-back plays a significant role in the transition to a Circular Economy. Many businesses are introducing retailer-level take-back schemes for low and medium-value products by deploying collection bins for customers to drop off used products. However, the literature has not given much attention to these schemes compared to those with high recovery value products. The viability of such schemes depends on several factors, including the volume of returns and the contamination in the collection bins. We consider a two-echelon reverse supply chain consisting of a retailer taking back low and medium-value used products and delivering them to a recycler for value recovery. We mathematically model the optimal retailer decisions, including the return incentive paid to customers, investment in contamination reduction, the number and capacity of bins, their product assignment, and time between shipments from the retailer to the recycler, and apply the optimisation model to a case study. In addition, our numerical experiments with globally representative parameter value combinations provide generalisable insights for theory and practice. For example, recycling low-value products like plastic containers is economically infeasible for retailers under all conditions. However, including at least one medium-value product, such as apparel, in a take-back programme aids in offsetting its costs. Investing in reducing contamination for any product type is financially unwarranted unless the costs of separation and disposal exceed that of contamination reduction investment. Furthermore, combining multiple product streams into fewer bins could improve financial results, but keeping bins separate may offer psychological benefits to users.
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