The average consumption for EU member countries is 128 litres per inhabitant per day and most of it turns into wastewater.

Remanufacturing is the process of returning a product or component to a state of quality equivalent or superior to that of the original product. After the product is discarded by its user and picked up by the remanufacturer, a diagnosis establishes if the product is suitable for a remanufacturing process. Next, after the disassembly, a thorough inspection is done of each component. Damaged pieces are repaired, and parts that are operational but could fail in the short term are repaired or replaced.

Currently, discarded products are often considered as ‘waste’, while in the best cases, some parts are recovered or the product is recycled to recover materials. A circular economy model closes the production cycle to optimise the use of resources and minimise the generation of waste. In this model there is a recovery hierarchy; first, the complete product is recovered, then its parts and the materials, and, finally, the embedded energy is recovered. Landfill disposal is the last option since it does not recover any resources.