Sustainability evaluation of repair and remanufacture solutions in a circular headlamp economy

Circular economy is a key lever to reduce the environmental footprint of various products, including lighting solutions such as automotive headlamps. From energy recovery to rethinking the design of headlamps, various goals can be achieved along the way. It is evident that different strategies lead to different environmental and economic impacts at the end-of-life stage of a headlamp. Additionally, there are many ways to achieve these circular goals which makes the evaluation and comparison difficult. In this paper a case study is conducted to assess the ecological and economic impacts of these circular approaches using state of the art automotive headlamps. This study maps and quantifies the repair and remanufacturing processes for end-of-life headlamps. It evaluates the influence of eco-design strategies by comparing destructive and non-destructive methods used to recover components. The analysis demonstrates that both repair and remanufacturing are viable from economic and environmental perspective. However, the benefits could be reduced by the challenges of scaling these processes, such as logistical demands and the number of headlamps needed for the circular pathway over the course of a headlamps lifetime.