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Analysis of remanufacturer waste streams for electronic products

The long-term goal of this work is to enable design of durable products that facilitates remanufacture. Remanufacturing, or recycling at a part level, involves the production-batch disassembly, restoration to like-new condition and reassembly of used products. Remanufacturing offers significant environmental benefits by retaining the energy, as well as material, embodied in the product during original manufacture, while diverting solid waste from landfills. Since the essential goal of remanufacture is to reuse parts, parts that are not reused enter the waste streams of remanufacturers and represent the ultimate obstacles to remanufacture. Study of these waste streams reveals insights about difficulties in remanufacture and how to avoid these difficulties through product design. Traditionally, remanufacturing has centered on products such as automotive parts and electrical motors, However, the growth in electronic and electrical product sectors has triggered a corresponding growth in the remanufacturing in these sectors. To support design for remanufacture in these sectors, waste streams of remanufacturers of different electronic products, namely laser-printer toner cartridges and telephones, were studied and quantified. This paper presents the results of these waste-stream analyses, including the identification of discard reasons, associated root causes for these discard reasons, and consequently, product design and other characteristics that are problematic for remanufacturing.