Remanufacturing

Remanufacturing is a process whereby used items are disassembled, and their components are inspected, cleaned, and then used in the manufacture of new products. A product is considered remanufactured if its primary components come from a used product, although it should not be inferior to, or less durable than, comparable new products that solely use virgin materials, which are materials that haven't been used, consumed, or subject to processing before. Remanufacturing can reduce both production costs and demand for increasingly scarce virgin natural resources, although other options such as reuse or recycling may be preferable depending on product type and the value of the materials. Remanufacturing differs from recycling in that recycling takes a material (newspapers, plastic bottles, cans) that often feeds into the production ...