4.5 Case Gamma 67
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- If the customer was moving home he/she could remove the parquet and take
it with him/her.- Give responsibility to a third party to remove, refurbish and reuse the parquet.
- Lease parquet instead of selling it.
The advantage of option one is that the organization is able to recover the high-qual-
ity parquet and resell it, only having to make minor additional efforts to refurbish
it. Option two gives the customer the choice of a second use for the parquet. The
organization would not have to make any additional efforts but at the same time it
would receive no benefits e.g. through reselling the refurbished parquet. The last
option is probably the most economically reasonable particularly in situations where
the parquet is far away from production sites. In these cases, it might neither be
economically nor ecologically reasonable to transport the parquet several hundred
kilometers to refurbish and resell it. A third party should be considered to remove the
parquet and reuse it. As with option two, this option requires no additional efforts
but results in no additional benefits for the organization. A fourth option considered
to close the loop and to retrieve the parquet is to lease the parquet rather than sell
it. The interviewee describes the idea as follows: “This means we give customers who
decide that they no longer like their flooring the option to have it removed and we pay
for 10 percent to 15 percent of the parquet” (see Appendix: German Quote 10). The
benefit of this approach is that the organization is able to rescue the parquet at the
end of its first life-cycle to refurbish and resell it. Furthermore, this option results
in lower costs for the customer and provides him/her with the choice to change the
parquet after having it for a couple of years. This approach is still being developed
and therefore has not yet been implemented by the organization.
To summarize, the circular economy approach selected by case Gamma isworking for the organization. However, many questions still have to be answered
before the circular economy approach is implemented fully. The loop can be closed
but just how has not yet been decided and the infrastructure to do so is lacking.
The second circular economy approach chosen by the organization is circularsupplies on process level. This means the organization uses renewable energy in
its production process and has environmentally compatible water management.
4.5.2 Motivation to engage in Circular Economy
The reasons why the organization chose to invest in the concept of circular economy
and close-loop production are manifold.