*REuse, REpair, REfurbish, REmanufacture, REcycle
Brought to you by Setenay Saglam from Empa
In response to the urgent need for a shift to a more environmentally friendly economic model, Europe has demonstrated its commitment through the European Green Deal. Considering the potential for greater resource efficiency and reduced waste, the EU has taken action for the manufacturing industry as well. As a result, the Circular Economy Action Plan was implemented and now serves as a guiding light for the industry’s transformation.
Recognising that the entire value chain requires careful attention, policymakers have diligently addressed each of its stages – from sourcing raw materials to manufacturing, usage, collection, and waste management. Through targeted policies such as Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Waste Directive or Right to Repair, a broad range of products now falls under regulation to ensure more sustainable practices at every product life cycle stage. These policy efforts play an essential role in unlocking circularity, by incentivising every stakeholder to contribute to a more sustainable economy and consequently making products, components, materials remain longer in the current value chain.
The shift from traditional linear value chains to circular models requires connecting stakeholders and ensuring an efficient flow of information to support circularity. This not only calls for clear communication among all parties but also the transfer of relevant information to end-users, including both consumers and end-of-life treatment facilities. These end-users play a key role, holding the decision-making power that determines a product’s fate, whether it will be reused, recycled, or remanufactured.
Yet, the complexity of regulatory requirements and product-specific properties, combined with limited individual capacity to fully process them, presents challenges in selecting the most effective circular economy options. Consequently, those responsible for these final decisions often find themselves uncertain about the accurate end-of-life path for a product.
Amid this challenge, we, as CE-RISE Project, aim to build a framework that guides stakeholders in their decision-making process, integrating all necessary inputs into the equation. This framework is still a work in progress and explores, among others, the following key concepts:
RE-strategy
One of the key concepts is “RE-strategy,” our shorthand for Circular Economy Strategy. RE-strategies encompass all the possible processes a product can undergo as it approaches its end-of-life, including recycling, remanufacturing, refurbishing, repurposing, repairing, and reusing.
RE-indicator
The RE-strategies are designed to promote circularity, enabling products to remain in use for longer, both in the market and with consumers. In CE-RISE, we set out to develop quantifiable metrics/indicators to assess the product’s ability to go through each RE-strategy.
RE-parameter
The RE-indicators are calculated from a set of parameters we call RE-parameters, which comprise information about the product including its components and materials. For instance, when assessing repairability, we consider RE-parameters such as the availability of a repair shop, spare parts, necessary tools, and how easily the product can be disassembled to access broken components. Together, these parameters provide a comprehensive score (the RE-indicator) which helps guide us in grading the suitability of every product to undergo each RE-strategy.
RE-criteria
Lastly, a benchmark for comparing RE-strategies is also being developed using a set of criteria we call RE-criteria. While RE-indicators show how much a product is suitable to bear a particular RE-strategy, comparing strategies requires additional considerations that go beyond feasibility. RE-criteria represent additional constraints that can help us rank and prioritize further the RE-strategies. As represented in the Figure below these constraints can be of different types.
For example, while a high RE-indicator score may suggest that a strategy is feasible, RE-criteria such as “make-or-break” can help eliminate unsuitable options. A product lacking modularity might be unfit for certain strategies, or limited treatment facilities could prevent recycling. Additionally, mandatory and voluntary requirements—like regulatory boundaries or compliance with standards—may restrict or favour specific strategies. For instance, if safety information on materials is lacking, a safe repair process might not be feasible. Moreover, minimum requirements like a battery’s charge level could influence refurbishability based on the Battery Regulation. Other technical considerations, such as material fatigue or an environmentally optimised lifetime index, could limit how long a product stays in the loop without risking inefficiency or obsolescence.
Together, these concepts—RE-indicators, RE-parameters, and RE-criteria—are essential to making the RE-strategies assessment process more evidence-based and transparent, supporting both consumers and end-of-life treatment providers in making well informed choices.
While the described approach brings us a step further in assessing the suitability of a RE-strategy for a specific product, we should not forget that a holistic approach also requires consideration of socio-economic and environmental impacts of each RE-strategy. For instance, we should assess how a particular strategy could reduce carbon emissions, improve labour practices, support local markets or keep the critical raw materials as long as possible in the economy.
Conclusion
With our planned digital infrastructure, developed in collaboration with various partners across different work packages, we aim to bring these ideas to life by integrating socio-economic and environmental assessments (SEE) alongside our RE-indicator evaluations. Our goal is to identify potential circular economy practices (RE-strategies) and assess their associated socio-economic and environmental impacts to support decision-making for more sustainable and circular end-of-life strategies.
As the CE-RISE Project, we aim to contribute to a sustainable circular future. We strive to bring this future closer by ensuring our holistic assessments are conveniently accessible to end-users, empowering them to contribute to this positive change. We also hope to see products that carry more confidently stamps like “Recycled in EU,” “Remanufactured in EU,” or “Repaired in EU” more often than the “Made in” labels we’re so familiar with today.