The Proposal of an Environmental Break-Even Point as Assessment Method of Product-Service Systems for Circular Economy

Abstract

In this paper we propose a method to assess technology-based product-service systems and help manufacturing companies in decision making with a new indicator: the environmental break-even point (e-BEP), equivalent to the economic indicator applied to environmental performance. A case study is presented to provide a concrete application of the indicator: when designing an optical sorter for electronic waste, the e-BEP revealed how many mobile phones must be either repurposed or recycled for the sorter to offset the system’s environmental impact. The e-BEP shows potential to make CEOs and production managers adopt a product life-cycle thinking in their technology investments.