Page 7 - Environmental_Circular Economy

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All along this period, numerous of theories and research documents were published with number of
references to the R-Imperatives (Rs). In “The circular economy: New or Refurbished as CE 3.0”,
researchers have analysed a total of 69 texts of references and found a large range of Rs, from 3Rs to 10Rs,
making reference to a variety of concepts. Also, it seems the the 3Rs principle are the most commonly used
and consensuated in the CE2010+ literature, despite a frequent use of 4Rs, 5Rs and &Rs.The next title will
present first the 3Rs of the circular economy, and will add four of the most commonly addressed
R-Imperatives, as complementary references.

1.2 The 7 R´s of the circular economy

After having contextualised the 7R’s in the circular economy, we propose to review now these 7R’s one by
one, with some example of application:

Reuse:

Many products can be used for more than one application over the time. Even if the first customer won’t
need a product anymore, because his circumstance change or because he simply does not want it anymore,
this same product has good probability of being in a good enough state to enable a new use by someone
else. This can be the case for most products, clothes, furnitures, cars… There is an important market for
second hand products, that can be proposed by particulars (for instance on websites such as ebay), but also
by some retail professionals themselves. This is largely developed for cars, but you can also think at shops
like GAME (for videogames) that propose a section for second hand video games and consoles, where
customers can resale the products that they are not using anymore. For more information, you might also
refer to the topic “Sustainable Global Economy” and our section about the shared economy.