This would not necessarily be a poor strategy for businesses, there are business models that provide opportunities to retain ownership of valuable products and components through leasing, servicing, repair and re-sale. Both in the formal and informal economy there is huge potential for the reuse of goods and materials to deliver social and economic and environmental benefits. The EU Circular Economy Package, the Scottish Circular Economy Strategy and the national reuse target set by the Spanish Government are examples of governments recognising that second-hand goods should be a good value mainstream option and are working towards making reuse easier for consumers. In environmental terms, reuse ought to be more common than recycling and
energy recovery, with both the financial and environmental costs of simple refurbishment of some products being a fraction of original manufacturing costs. If we are going to be serious about living in a Circular Economy we need to recognise the value of our waste and ensure resources are kept in the economy for longer, slow down the use of valuable raw materials and ensure that products are reused and materials are recycled rather than landfilled.
Remanufacturing The most involved reuse organizations are "repair and overhaul" industries which take valuable parts, such as
engine blocks,
office furniture,
toner cartridges,
single-use cameras,
aircraft hulls, and
cathode ray tubes (CRTs) and refurbish them in a factory environment in order to meet the same/similar specifications as new products. When the item is resold under the same OEM name, it is informally considered a "gray market" item - if it is sold as used, it's legal, if it's represented as an OEM product eligible for
rebates and
warranties, it is considered "counterfeit" or "black market". The automobile parts industry in the USA is governed by laws on the disclosure of "used" parts and, in some states,
mattresses which have been used are required to be sanitized or destroyed.
Package deposit programs . Deposit values (0.5-2
Kyrgyz som) are posted next to the sample bottles on the rack
Deposit programs offer customers a financial incentive to return
packaging for reuse. Although no longer common, international experience is showing that they can still be an effective way to encourage packaging reuse. However, financial incentive, unless great, may be less of an incentive than convenience: statistics show that, on average, a milk bottle is returned 12 times, whereas a lemonade bottle with a 15p deposit is returned, on average, only 3 times. Refillable bottles are used extensively in many European countries; for example in
Denmark, 98% of bottles are refillable, and 98% of those are returned by consumers. These systems are typically supported by
deposit laws and other regulations. Sainsbury Ltd have operated a
plastic carrier bag cash refund scheme in 1991 - "the penny back scheme". The scheme is reported to save 970 tonnes of plastic per annum. The scheme has now been extended to a penny back on a voucher which can be contributed to schools registered on the scheme; it estimates this will raise the savings in plastic to 2500 tonnes per annum. In some developing nations like India and Pakistan, the cost of new bottles often forces manufacturers to collect and refill old glass bottles for selling
cola and other drinks. India and Pakistan also have a way of reusing old newspapers: "Kabadiwalas" buy these from the readers for scrap value and reuse them as packaging or recycle them. Scrap intermediaries help consumer dispose of other materials including metals and plastics.
Closed-loop programs These apply primarily to items of packaging, for example, where a company is involved in the regular transportation of goods from a central manufacturing facility to warehouses or warehouses to retail outlets. In these cases there is considerable benefit to using reusable "transport packaging" such as plastic crates or pallets. The benefits of closed-loop reuse are primarily due to low additional transport costs being involved, the empty lorry returning with the empty crates. There have been some recent attempts to get the public to join in on closed loop reuse schemes where shoppers use reusable plastic baskets in place of carrier bags for transporting their goods home from the supermarket; these baskets fit on specially designed trolleys making shopping supposedly easier.
Refilling programs There have been some market-led initiatives to encourage packaging reuse by companies introducing
refill packs of certain commodities (mainly soap powders and cleaning fluids), the contents being transferred before use into a reusable package kept by the customer, with the savings in packaging being passed onto the customer by lower shelf prices. The refill pack itself is not reused, but being a minimal package for carrying the product home, it requires less material than one with the durability and features (reclosable top, convenient shape, etc.) required for easy use of the product, while avoiding the transport cost and emissions of returning the reusable package to the factory.
Regifting The average American, for example, throws away 67.9 pounds of used clothing and rags.
Repurposing Repurposing is to use a tool for use as another tool, usually for a purpose unintended by the original tool-maker. Typically, repurposing is done using items usually considered to be junk or garbage. A good example of this would be the
Earthship style of house, that uses tires as insulating walls and bottles as glass walls. Reuse is not limited to repeated uses for the same purpose. Examples of repurposing include using tires as
boat fenders and
steel drums or plastic drums as
feeding troughs and/or composting bins.
Reuse of waste water and excreta in agriculture The nutrients, i.e. nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and micronutrients, and organic matter contained in
wastewater, excreta (
urine and
feces) and
greywater have traditionally been reused in agriculture in many countries and are still being reused in agriculture to this day - unfortunately often in an unregulated and unsafe manner. This is particularly a problem in many developing countries (e.g. Mexico, India, Bangladesh, Ghana) where untreated or poorly treated wastewater is used directly in agriculture. The WHO Guidelines from 2006 have set up a framework how this reuse can be done safely by following a multiple barrier approach.
Waste valorization ==Measuring the impact of reuse, reuse metrics==