From a logistical perspective re-use activities give rise to an additional goods ¯ow from the consumers back to producers. The management of this flow opposite to the conventional supply chain is the concern of the recently evolved field of `Reverse Logistics' [40]. Issues arising encompass distribution,inventory and production management aspects. Important factors characterising specific re-use situations include economical and ecological drivers,actors involved and their respective roles, and the technical form of re-use. We refer to Fleischmann
et al. [17] for a more detailed discussion.