Success factors and barriers in re-use of electrical and electronic equipment

• We interviewed 28 re-use organisations to determine the factors they attribute their success to.
• We asked the same organisations about the barriers that they faced in conducting re-use.
• They were asked to rank the success factors and barriers from the larger pool of responses.
• The difficulty in accessing suitable equipment was the biggest barrier to the re-use industry.
• Good quality re-use practices were the most important success factor for a re-use organisation.

This paper aims to identify specific and generic success factors and barriers in the re-use of electrical and electronic equipment for a variety of different operating models. The scope of the study is information and communication technologies (ICT) and large household appliances. Success factors and barriers for re-use were identified through the conducting of semi-structured interviews with 28 case study partners representing the different models. A list of generic success factors and barriers was identified. From this generic list, the re-use success factors and barriers were ranked by the interviewees with regards to their importance. On the one hand, the difficulty in accessing sufficient volumes of good quality used equipment and the lack of legislations, which support, incentivize and – if necessary – enforce this access, were identified as most impactful barriers. On the other hand, the control and securing of product and process quality were ranked as most important success factors. Re-use organisations, which adhere to good re-use practices, differentiate themselves through quality guarantee from non-compliant, informal competitors. Moreover, proven quality strengthens confidence in re-use of important stakeholders like suppliers, customers, authorities and the general public. Differences in reuse barriers and success factors were also explored for varying geographical regions, product category and operating models.