Sustainability and Circularity

Sustainability and Circularity is the lever that converts what used to be a compliance cost line into a margin and revenue opportunity. Refurbished, remanufactured, and parts-harvested units carry materially higher margins than virgin-build equivalents in capital goods, electronics, and off-highway. At the same time, the EU Green Deal, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, and the Digital Product Passport are turning circularity data from optional ESG reporting into a hard prerequisite to keep selling in Europe.

PLM is the only enterprise system that already knows what every unit is made of, who built it, and what version is in the field. That makes it the natural backbone for material-compliance data on the part master, recyclate content tracked across the BOM, repair and refurbishment instructions linked from service notes, and end-of-life disposition recorded in the digital thread.

Business benefits

• Revenue: remanufacturing, take-back, and refurbishment programs unlock margin-accretive secondary product lines, especially in capital goods and B2B machinery.
• Compliance: Digital Product Passport and Ecodesign readiness preserve EU market access — non-compliance simply ends shelf placement.
• Cost: designed-in recyclability and material substitution reduce raw-material exposure and end-of-life disposal cost.
• Capital: ESG-aligned manufacturers measurably benefit from cheaper sustainability-linked financing and lower insurance premiums.
• Brand: sustainability claims backed by auditable PLM data win institutional B2B tenders that increasingly score lifecycle impact.

Relationships (see sidebar)

• Realized by processes such as End of Life and Disposal, Service and Maintenance, and Supplier Development.
• Reinforced by Regulatory Compliance obligations like REACH, RoHS, and the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation.