The application of remanufacturing in sustainable manufacture

Modern society is characterised by high consumption and ownership of constantly replaced products. Typically, the discarded products are disposed in landfill or scrapped for material recovery. The resulting escalation in landfill and its associated problems has brought remanufacturing to the fore as a sustainable manufacture and waste management strategy. The significance of remanufacturing is that it would permit manufacturers to respond to competitive, environmental and legislative pressures by enabling them to meet pressing waste legislation while producing high-quality, lower-cost products with less environmentally damaging end-of-life and manufacturing modes. However, as a relatively new topic, remanufacturing has gained little attention in world economies. This paper describes the potential role of product recovery processes, in particular remanufacture, in managing products over their life cycle. It also explains the significance of remanufacture to the construction industry and describes the technical challenges of designing products for remanufacture.