Journal
SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION
Volume 26, Issue -, Pages 1084-1098Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.spc.2021.01.011
Keywords
Circular business models; Product service systems; Life cycle assessment; Material flow assessment; Stock dynamics
Funding
- Circular European Economy Innovative Training Network - European Union [721909]
- Marie Curie Actions (MSCA) [721909] Funding Source: Marie Curie Actions (MSCA)
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The Netherlands is leading the way in promoting and utilizing circular business models, particularly product leasing and pay-per-use models in the home appliances sector. Research has shown that product leasing could bring the greatest material use benefits, while the climate change impact mitigation from circular business models needs to be compared with the benefits of decarbonized electricity. Successful energy transition could shift the focus towards the production phase of energy-intensive appliances regarding climate change impacts.
Among European countries, The Netherlands is boosting the transformation to a circular economy creating and deploying circular business models across different sectors, including the home appliances sector. Although in recent years shared access-based business models have attracted the attention of the scientific community from a sustainability perspective, a very different family of circular business models are in fact being deployed in other markets and have not yet been studied from a sustainability perspective. These circular business models are product lease and pay-per-use, which are now offered by more than ten companies in the Dutch market. However, whether these business models represent environmental and material benefits is still in question. In this article, we apply a dynamic life cycle assessment modelling framework to study the material use and climate change impact implications of the long-term and potentially large-scale adoption of these two circular business models in the Dutch market of washing machines towards 2050, considering the energy transition of three regions: The Dutch, European, and global regions. Of nine scenarios modelled, the large scale and quick adoption of product leasing will represent the largest material use benefits, followed by the pay-per-wash model, both comparable to the material benefits obtained by other well studied shared-access business models. In climate change impact mitigation, the benefits of the circular business models are dwarfed by the benefits of a decarbonized electricity. Yet, with a successful energy transition, we could expect a re-prioritization of the life cycle of energy intensive appliances regarding climate change impacts in the future, from the use phase to the use and production phase, equally. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Institution of Chemical Engineers. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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