Environmental Impacts of Rental Service with Reconditioning – A Case Study

This paper presents a combination of selling service and life time extension strategy which has previously been proposed by others but with no supporting environmental impact assessment. It aims at evaluating rental service with reconditioning using a photocopier as a case study. Life Cycle Assessment was employed to provide a quantitative comparison of rental service with reconditioning and traditional product selling. The findings indicate that the reconditioning is potentially a promising way for improving the environmental performance of the rental service. However, it is premature to draw the general conclusion with further environmental impact measurement being required since the approach is very dependent on specific environmental impact factors.