A report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation said remanufacturing will generate more higher skilled jobs, while increased spending on employment will be enabled as the circular economy reduces prices.
The Centre for Remanufacturing and Reuse reported on the research, which detailed one of the principles of the circular economy as “optimis[ing] resource yields by circulating products, components, and materials at the highest utility at all times in both technical and biological cycles”, which includes designing for remanufacturing and refurbishing.
The foundation identified six actions that businesses and governments can take to make the transition to a circular economy: regenerate, share, optimise, loop, virtualise, and exchange. It also said that the cost of remanufacturing mobile phones could fall 50 percent per device if the industry made phones easier to disassemble and improved the reverse cycle with new incentives to return phones.