DeepSummary
The podcast episode features an interview with Sebastian Holmström, the Circular Strategy Lead at Inrego, a company that refurbishes and resells used electronics. Sebastian explains Inrego's business model of buying, repairing, and reselling used electronics, with a focus on closing the loop by getting products back for reuse multiple times.
Sebastian discusses his role as the chairman of an expert group on reuse, part of the Swedish government's Circular Economy Delegation. The group aims to identify ways to encourage and scale up reuse, such as addressing regulations and taxation systems that were designed for a linear economy.
Sebastian highlights the importance of measuring reuse, considering the whole life cycle of products, and shifting the focus from whether a product is new or used to its functionality. He also emphasizes the need to make circular solutions attractive to a broader audience beyond just sustainable consumers.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Inrego's business model involves buying, repairing, and reselling used electronics, with a focus on closing the loop and enabling multiple reuse cycles.
- Sebastian Holmström chairs an expert group on reuse as part of the Swedish government's Circular Economy Delegation, which aims to identify ways to encourage and scale up reuse, such as through regulatory changes and measuring reuse.
- Preconditions for encouraging reuse at a larger scale include addressing the price and cost aspect, shifting the focus from new vs. used to functionality, considering the whole life cycle of products, and making circular solutions attractive to a broader audience beyond just sustainable consumers.
- Existing regulations and taxation systems were designed for a linear economy and need to be adapted to support a circular economy and reuse.
- Measuring reuse is important, as current systems primarily measure waste processing instead of reuse.
- Specifying the functionality needed rather than specific product models can help encourage reuse and make it easier for refurbished products to meet requirements.
- While some consumers choose reused products for sustainability reasons, many do so primarily for the lower cost, which needs to be considered in marketing and communication strategies.
- Collaboration between different actors in the reuse industry can help achieve greater scale and meet demand.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “We all seen the latest reports with the IPCC, and we need to really cut the emissions quickly. And reuse is a way in which we, without technological breakthrough, can cut the emissions really much already here today.“ by Sebastian Holmström
- “And if you look at an IT department, they don't want ten different models. It's really complicated, it's costly, but if you go from one to two or three, it's not that big difference and it's something you can work with.“ by Sebastian Holmström
- “We need to make circular solutions broader than the circular community. We need to take it all over the economy.“ by Sebastian Holmström
- “Well, I think we really can't get around the price and how do we deliver that. And we can do things there on the longer scale in legislations, but we can also do things today to lowering the cost of what we're doing to make it in a more efficient way, working with innovation, trying to handle these things.“ by Sebastian Holmström
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Episode Information
Getting In the Loop: Circular Economy | Sustainability | Closing the Loop
Katherine Whalen
2/14/22
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Resources and links discussed in this episode are available at gettinginthelooppodcast.com.
ABOUT TODAY'S EPISODE
In today’s episode, we’re talking all things about reuse of electronics. Sebastian Holmström explains how Inrego’s electronics refurbishment business model works. We discuss the Swedish Government’s Circular Economy Delegation where Sebastian is the chairman of an expert group on reuse and Sebastian shares several ‘pre-conditions’ he believes necessary to encourage reuse at a large scale.
ABOUT TODAY'S GUEST
Sebastian Holmström is Circular Strategy Lead at Inrego. Before joining Inrego, Sebastian worked to reduce littering in Sweden at Keep Sweden Clean. Sebastian is also a board member of the Swedish circular economy platform Cradlenet.