Product as a Service of household appliances – Making the use of critical raw materials more efficient

Product as a service, a.k.a. PaaS, is viewed as a business model with the potential to improve circularity and resource efficiency in the economy. With PaaS where the ownership of the product remains with the provider of the service, there is a possibility of better controlling the flow of the products and materials. Closing the loop in professional and better ways will make it easier to recycle, refurbish or remanufacture a larger part of the product than today. This is especially of interest concerning critical raw materials (CRMs), where the need to decrease dependency on imports to the EU is crucial. This paper reports on PaaS business models provided in European markets by an original equipment manufacturer for a household appliance. The results of a material flow analysis are presented, where a comparison is made between a regular business model and PaaS. The focus is on CRMs and the results show the potential areas of improvement for reducing virgin CRMs and what should be considered in the PaaS solutions.