Environmental impact assessment of bike trailers. A comparative study of product-oriented and use-oriented product service systems using lifecycle assessment (LCA)

Abstract: Linear business models which focus on growth and profitability have been deemed to be destructive to the environment, leading to generation of vast volumes of waste and contributing to environmental impacts. As a solution to this problem, a system wide change in the form of circular economy has been proposed. Circular economy focuses on regeneration of materials, keeping resources in use as long possible, and implementation of new circular business models. However, the lack of evidence on its financial performance and sustainability benefits deters business to make the transition, hence upscaling circular business models has been observed to be slow. This research attempts to fill this gap by estimating the environmental impact of a bike trailer sold by Thule Group in Sweden, using life cycle assessment (LCA) and recommend a suitable circular business model for a bike trailer based on its environmental performance. The thesis aimed to quantify and compare the environmental impacts of three scenarios of Product Service System (PSS), an archetype of circular business model. These scenarios include two product-oriented PSS and one hypothetical use-oriented PSS, leasing, which were developed based on interviews with leasing companies and consultation within the case company. For the purpose of LCA, quantitative and qualitative data was collected from different departments within Thule Group. The results revealed that the leasing scenario performed 28-33% depending on the impact category better than the ownership scenario when the bike trailers are disposed after 6 years of use. However, if the trailers have a second use through sales in the second-hand market for 6 more years, the ownership scenario is preferable where it performs 25-32% better than the leasing scenario across the impact categories. The study provides key recommendations to the manufacturing companies and leasing companies to reduce their environmental impacts within their product and to transition away from linear business models.