Business Constraints in Reuse Services

Global product sales are increasing rapidly. As many as 70 million automobiles are produced annually worldwide. The number of refrigerators, PCs, and cellular phones sold annually are 80 million, 230 million, and 1.1 billion, respectively. Manufacturing these products require a large amount of energy and material resources. Therefore, to achieve an environmentally sustainable society, it is necessary to reduce energy consumption and materials use in manufacturing by prolonging the use of products, and by encouraging the reuse of their parts. Businesses that develop closed-loop supply chains of products, or that support the promotion of product reuse, parts reuse, product remanufacturing, and effective material recycling, minimize CO₂ problems, energy and material resource problems, and hazardous waste problems, thereby playing significant roles in achieving environmentally sustainable industries. Using interviews, companies that run reuse businesses were surveyed for this study. We focus on the reuse business in four product areas: cars, auto parts, PCs, and ink cartridges. The survey involved interviews of managers from eight companies. We also conducted a consumer survey via questionaires to investigateconsumer recognition and impressions of reused products. Here we present the results of those surveys.