Annual flow models are presented for remanufacturable products, including reused and recycled packaging, household hazardous waste containers, refurbishable electronic equipment, used car parts etc. Dominant physical variables are identified: remanufacturing frequency, lifetime, total number of uses, amount of product present in the market, total consumer demand, annual production and net trade imports, consumer discard, recovery and remanufacturing rate of consumer discard and reuse date. Conventional policy indices such as the recycling rate and physical variables are shown non suitable to monitor environmental performance or remanufacturable products. A remanufacturing rate index is introduced for purposes of shortcut and reliable environmental assessment with respect to three specific environmental criteria: annual waste quantities; annual resource depletion and; annual environmental impacts from remanufacturing. The remanufacturing rate is explicitly related to the physical variables. The results may serve for monitoring and comparative assessment of remanufacturable products and for setting feasible and reachable environmental policy targets.
