Waste – an asset : Assessment of a take-back system for electric power tools

Abstract: This master thesis has been conducted during the spring semester of 2013 at the Royal Institute of Technology in cooperation with Atlas Copco Industrial Technique. The work which has been performed was to analyze and evaluate the potential of a take-back system for discarded electric power tools. The goal has been to develop models for how such a system could be designed in order to achieve a decreased environmental impact, increased financial gains and a simplified end of life management for the customers in comparison with the current system. The work partly consisted of mapping the end of life handling activities of an electric nutrunner from the Atlas Copco product range, as well as find possible areas of improvement. Materials and components were evaluated in order to single out components with high material value, high internal purchasing price, lacking or inadequate handling or high environmental impact related to mining and extraction of the raw material. This evaluation served as a basis to single out components with high improvement potential from the perspective of recycling and reuse. Three concepts were developed based on the investigations, where single components or entire tools were returned to Atlas Copco. In the first concept, customers send the rotors to Atlas Copco, which reintroduces the rotors in the manufacturing line. The remaining two concepts involve entire tools to be sent to a common service workshop, where the electric motor and transducer is taken care of in varying extent by reintroduction to new production and reuse as spare parts after quality control. All three concepts leads to somewhat longer transportations than the standard way of handling the tools today, but was through a life cycle assessment evaluated to be able to render environmental benefits from 18 and 8 percent collected tools based on the European market. The system was calculated to finance its own transports, manual disassembly operations and economic incentive towards the customer to motivate them to return tools. To maximize the system potential, Atlas Copco should adopt design for disassembly in a more modularized way.