Integrative re-use systems as innovative business models for devising sustainable product-service-systems

Re-use implies recovering items from the waste stream to use them in identical or similar processes, mostly at consumer level. Currently, re-use is restricted to niches, but by 2020 the European Commission wants to mainstream re-use as a waste management option to increase resource efficiency. Ecologically oriented work integration social enterprises focussing on re-use (re-use ECO-WISEs) might help accomplish as they not only intend to re-integrate marginalised people into the labour market, but provide comprehensive re-use services (e.g. repair) and thus constitute a novel kind of Sustainable Product-Service System (SPSS). This paper contributes to a scientific framework for re-use ECO-WISEs by linking existing theoretical knowledge on SPSS to novel knowledge from three cases representing the variety of re-use ECO-WISEs in Austria. For analysis we use the so-called Business Model Canvas, adding a comprehensive stakeholder consideration. Results show that re-use ECO-WISEs contribute to all three dimensions of sustainability by helping reduce waste and increasing resource productivity and by providing jobs and affordable goods for disadvantaged people. Full implementation, however, will need additional efforts from all stakeholders involved, including the ECO-WISEs themselves, but also public authorities and society at large.