In conversation with our partners

Repair and reuse first

Repair&Share helps remove barriers to repair and reuse with projects on circular business models and sharing systems. This is something Recupel is fully committed to.

“Of the electrical appliances that are today being collected for recycling, 40% can simply be repaired. And yet, these appliances are rarely reused”, says Ward Dumon, coordinator of Repair&Share’s Repair zkt Hub project. Dumon has vast experience with repairs. He started off in 1989 at the central servicing department at Philips, and in 1994, he made the leap to become an independent TV repairer. In 2000, he took over Servilux, a repairs company he headed for 22 years. Servilux’s 160 employees repair household appliances at customers’ homes or in workplaces. During Dumon’s tenure, expansion into Luxembourg and the Netherlands are just a couple of the successes Servilux enjoyed.

So Dumon has certainly proven that repairs are a successful business model. He brought all that experience with him to Repair&Share, where he sets up projects to extend products’ lifespan. For this, he and his colleagues work with companies, citizens’ initiatives and professional repairers. One example is the Repair map on the website. There, people can find professional repairers or a Repair Café in their neighbourhood.

Mindset shift

“Conventional business models are traditionally not based on repairs, extending lifespan and reuse”, explains Dumon. “That’s why one of the things we are battling with is a fair price ratio between buying new and repairs. Repairs are often complicated and time-consuming because products are not necessarily designed for that. Spare parts are relatively expensive and you need specific tools or diagnosis software. In that sense, repair professionals find it difficult to compete with the price of buying new.”

“On the other hand, we don’t always pay a fair price for new products. One example is the environmental cost for production and transport. The balance between the cost of repair and a new purchase needs to be more realistic. Our recommendations include offering ‘repair cheques’ and the obligation to offer spare parts (new or second-hand). A tax shift is another solution: taxing the use of primary raw materials higher than circular activity.”

Recupel huts

At the end of 2020, the Repair zkt Hub was launched. Together with 22 partners, including Recupel, Repair&Share wants to strengthen the repairing capacity of social entrepreneurs and circular players. The focus is on three primary aspects: employment and training, research of product streams, and new business models for repairs. The project gets financial support from the Flemish government’s Department of Work and Social Economy and from Circular Flanders.

Dumon: “Within the product stream area, Recupel offers logistics support in the test project on ‘Careful Collection’. The goal is to collect reusable and repairable electrical and electronic appliances at recycling centres. For this, Recupel invests in marketing and in setting up ‘Recupel huts’, where visitors can place appliances or devices that can still be used on trolleys. This means they have more chance of being repaired and reused than when they are piled up on each other in a bulk container, where they risk being damaged. Second-hand shops pick up the appliances and devices, repair them when necessary and offer them for sale again. Agreements and compensation for logistics and resale are set out by Recupel in cooperation contracts.”

‘Repair First’

This project is still fully underway. “In 2023, we want to expand the number of participating recycling centres,” says Dumon. At the same time, new initiatives are being rolled out. “At the beginning of this year, we started the VLAIO project ‘Repair First’, in which Recupel plays a very valuable role. The idea is to increase the lifespan of small electrical and electronic appliances by offering repair as the first option.”

“Our strength lies in forging inspiring links with appliance and device manufacturers”

Every year, the COMET Group processes more than one-and-a-half million tonnes of waste coming from different sources, such as end-of-life vehicles, electrical and electronic devices and appliances (including solar panels – for the time being French) but also new end-of-life products like wind turbine blades and aircraft. The aim of the processing is to recover as much ferrous or non-ferrous material as possible such as aluminium, stainless steel and copper, as well as plastics, but also other materials.

Pierre-François Bareel, CEO of the COMET Group: “Our vision is to always reinvent ourselves to take recovering materials as far as possible. Our strength also lies in forging inspiring links with appliance and device manufacturers, particularly in the electrical and electronics sectors, who are then supplied for example with the PS and ABS plastics we produce. We are particularly good at – and proud of – giving them a positive carbon footprint.”

The company has innovative processes to recover the rare materials needed for the sustainable energy transition that are particularly found in electrical and electronic waste. “The industry can no longer limit itself to traditional materials. This is why we have a whole series of R&D programmes to be able to recover materials from increasingly complex products and produce, especially with robots, a good quantity and quality of new circular materials. Although recycling is a major part of our job, with the Reverse Metallurgy programme, we have also put in place stages to repurpose battery cells.”

Social vision

“Though our jobs are clearly situated in the environmental and climate sector, as a company, and even more so as a family business, we also have a social vision,” continues Bareel. “Almost 400 families earn their living with us, and I want to allow everyone to find the fulfilling career they dream of in our group. One of the ways of doing this is to get people who are disadvantaged in the employment market back into work with Comet Services, which dismantles and cleans up electrical or electronic waste, particularly that brought by Recupel to our sites in Charleroi and Mons.”

The added value of Recupel

The collaboration with Recupel has been ongoing for 20 years, but witnessed a noticeable evolution in 2022. COMET was put in charge of dismantling, cleaning up and recycling most of their two major streams: large white goods and small household appliances. “We are not content with just recycling to achieve a specific figure; we always want to go further. Recupel allows us to supply our brand new hydrometallurgy unit at Biolix in La Louvière. This unit, which is a world first, will over time recover 1,500 tonnes of almost pure copper from small cables we don’t know what to do with.”

“We recondition as much of the equipment we receive as possible”

Companies and organisations that wish to give a new lease of life to their IT equipment can reach out to Circular.brussels. Since 2019, this Brussels-based collection point has committed to addressing a range of environmental and societal challenges.

Circular.brussels collects IT equipment from organisations, free of charge, which it then uses to combat digital exclusion in Belgium. Dany Chouha, General Manager of Circular.brussels, explains: “We securely wipe the data from all the equipment we get, and provide the companies with a certification of data erasure. Then our teams apply a sorting system to establish whether the equipment can be reused, reconditioned or recycled.”

Doubling the impact with reconditioning

The sorting system allows Circular.brussels to determine what will happen with the collected equipment. Chouha: “Recycling is really our last resort. We recondition as much of the equipment we receive as possible”. In doing so, the association helps reduce the mountains of e-waste, whilst creating job opportunities for people who are at a distance from the labour market. “You’ll find people of every nationality here. It’s an asset. We promote diversity within our organisation.”

Recupel: a crucial platform for Circular.brussels

With partners such as BSH Home Appliances, Sirris, Innoviris and Lichtwerk, Recupel and Circular.brussels work together on the BrefurbiSH project. This has a dual purpose: optimum effectiveness in the reconditioning process of washing machines and dishwashers, and keeping energy impact under control. The shared vision of all the partners is to address social and environmental challenges through inclusion and economic activity.

What is the role of the Brussels-based association in this project? “Circular.brussels has created a reconditioning line for basic household appliances, and we are building up a stock of spare parts,” explains the General Manager. “Collecting these spare parts allows us to recondition other machines.” What about things that cannot be repaired? They are sent to Recupel, which takes care of the follow-up through its platform. “It’s also thanks to Recupel that we get collections and that partners are willing to work with us. This partnership has been a great deal of help to us.”

A bright future with Recupel

“We are currently exploring the possibility of becoming a ‘Recupel approved recycler’. This is an option we are studying for next year,” concludes Chouha. Circular.brussels would then be following in the footsteps of its parent company, Out of Use, which is already a Recupel accredited partner.