Remanufacturing and Recycling

Why is remanufacturing considered the "ultimate form of recycling?"

Remanufacturing's Environmental Edge
Inherently, remanufacturing has positive environmental ramifications. In fact, many organizations are now using the concept of remanufacturing, if not the term, in their environmental literature. The American Society of Mechanical Engineer’s position paper on "Designing for the Environment" includes the concept of remanufacturing. Also, the American Automobile Manufacturers Association in their "Key Facts about America’s Car Companies: Environment" includes remanufacturing in the life cycle of an automobile.

But why is remanufacturing considered the ultimate form of recycling? First, one must consider the definition of recycling. The term recycling is generally applied to consumable goods; such as newspapers, glass bottles and aluminum cans. However, recycling can also apply to durable goods; such as an engine. Once these goods are consumed, they may be recycled, meaning they are removed from the waste disposal stream, returned to their original raw material form and serve as raw materials for a manufacturing process. The environmental benefits of recycling are easy to comprehend; recycling reduces the quantity of waste headed for landfill space and adds multiple lives for the earth’s raw materials. If an engine were to be recycled, the steel from the item would be saved from the landfill space and could be used to produce another item requiring steel.

However, remanufacturing offers a better alternative. According to an entry by Professor Robert T. Lund of Boston University in the book, The American Edge: Leveraging Manufacturing’s Hidden Assets, remanufacturing differs from recycling because remanufacturing ‘recycles’ the value originally added to the raw material. According to Lund, "Remanufacturing differs from recycling also, most importantly because it makes a much greater economic contribution per unit of product than does recycling. The essential difference arises in the recapture of value added. Value added is the cost of labor, energy, and manufacturing operations that are added to the basic cost of raw materials in the manufacture of a product. For all but the most simple durable goods, value added is by far the largest element of cost. Even in a product as simple as a beer bottle, the cost of the basic raw materials (sand, soda, and lime) is much less than 5 percent of the cost of a finished bottle. The rest is value added. For a product such as an automobile, the value of the raw materials that can be recovered by recycling is only in the order of 1.5 percent of the market value of the new car. Value added is embodied in the product. Recycling destroys that value added, reducing a product to its elemental value - its recoverable raw material constituents. Further, recycling requires added labor, energy, and processing capital to recover the raw materials. When all of the costs of segregation, collection, processing, and refining are taken into account, recycling has significant societal cost. Society undertakes recycling only because, for all nondurable and many durable products, the societal cost of any other disposal alternative is even greater."

Remanufacturing recaptures the value-added to the product when it was first manufactured. In fact, a 1981 Massachusetts Institute of Technology study on the remanufacturing of automobile components indicated that approximately 85% of the energy expended in the manufacture of the original product was preserved in the remanufactured product. This is why remanufacturing is considered the ultimate form of recycling.

Are remanufacturing and demanufacturing the same thing?
No. Demanufacturing, essentially, describes a disassembly process. The remanufacturing process, as described previously, includes disassembly as the first step. Many additional steps are required in remanufacturing, including cleaning and examining components, replacing or remanufacturing those components, and, finally, reassembling the product to operate like a new one. To remanufacturers, disassembly is only the first of many steps. Demanufacturing, or disassembly, are often used for products which will be recycled. For instance, automobiles need to be disassembled so materials, such as steel, aluminum, assorted plastics, etc., are not mixed.

Demanufacturing does provide environmental benefits. However, if a product is only demanufactured and then recycled, society loses the value-added to a product that remanufacturing preserves.