Advancing the circular economy Reverse logistics and remanufacturing of dieselparticle filters

Abstract: The Circular economy (CE) is an economic system created as an alternative to the unsustainable linear economy. CE and its business models aims to deal with the challenges as resource depletion, waste creation and over consumption by closing the material loop. CE is today practiced using different business models. One such business model is remanufacturing. A business model that has gained a lot of attention in different industries, especially in the vehicle industry. The vehicle industry, is an industry that use a lot of materials, and have a huge impact on the environment, and with the use of remanufacturing, it accomplishes to reduce material usage and decrease environmental impacts. This creates the need to look further into the remanufacturing of vehicle parts, and the focus of this thesis is remanufacturing of more diesel particle filters in the Swedish market. The thesis involves three actors, Volvo Cars, Stena Recycling Sverige, and UBD Cleantech. The study originates from Giab godsinlösen Nordic AB, that had the assumption of that there are valuable streams of diesel particle filters that currently are not collected but could be collected for remanufacturing. This study goes through literature of different concepts with key concepts of drivers and barriers for remanufacturing in the vehicle sector. This to identify what drivers and barriers there are for remanufacturing in the vehicle sector. This is followed by interviews with representatives at Stena Recycling Sverige, Volvo Cars and UBD Cleantech to examine the possibilities to collect more diesel particle filters for remanufacturing. The findings show that there are established cooperations that could enable remanufacturing of more diesel particle filters. But barriers such as the customer demand, storing and sorting can be a difficulty to overcome. However, drivers such as the environmental incentive and laws and regulation is positive for it. The conclusion and recommendations suggest further research in evaluating the quality of the filters, and the customer demand for them, but also to research other actors such as car dismantlers and car workshops that are related to the collection of diesel particle filters.