Reverse logistics is the key for remanufacturing and a sustainable development

To establish sustainable development in industrialized countries an areawide, effective logistic network for the redistribution of used products will be necessary. Waste disposal logistics plays the key role in the realization of the closed substance cycle and waste management. Its task is to provide logistic links between the use and the recycling of products to close cycles. In future the development of appropriate transport chains by combining collection, transport, handling, storing, dismantling, reprocessing and treatment will decide on whether the economic and simultaneously ecological closing of material cycles will be successful. The realization of the closed substance cycle and waste management with the help of material cycles will considerably increase the number of the products to be returned and to be processed. The different requirements on collection, dismantling, recycling and reprocessing in the field of the high-grade and preferably short-life products and components will lead to a specialization and centralization of single processing plants. For lower-grade used products of relative high transportation effort, the decentralization of logistic facilities will be successful.