Abstract:
Product recovery at end-of-life (EoL), initially focusing on the reduction of residual (hazardous) waste, is currently being
enlarged and now link with emerging issues such as “resource efficiency” and “use and management of Critical Raw
Materials”. However, for many environmental aspects, product’s measures considered by current policies and industry
practices are not always consistent, nor optimized. It can be concluded that there is currently no systematic and consistent
integration of EoL and resource efficiency measures in product design practices and in product policies and this should be
improved. The paper proposes a new integrated method to assess the resource efficiency performances of products and
to derive relevant product’s measures for improvement. The assessment is based on five different criteria:
reusability/recyclability/recoverability - RRR - (per mass and per environmental impacts); recycled content (per mass and
per environmental impact); use and management of hazardous substances. The paper briefly describes the assessments
methods proposed for each of these criteria. The methods are based on existing literature and technical documents, and
have been adapted to this particular aim. The proposed method is presented and discussed on the basis of a Energy
using Product (EuP) case-study: a LCD-TV.
