Every year, Belgium watches €61 billion simply disappear. Not stolen, not lost to bad investments—just vanished through the quiet machinery of linear thinking. Raw materials arrive, products get made, things get used, and then—poof—into the landfill or incinerator. But here's the part that should keep you awake at night: between €15 billion and €24 billion of that loss could realistically be recovered. Not someday. Not in some hypothetical green future. Right now, with existing technology and processes that companies are already using across Flanders and beyond. The numbers tell a compelling story. The Netherlands has achieved a 32.7% circular material use rate—the highest in Europe. Belgium sits at 22.7%. That gap represents billions in opportunity. The remanufactured automotive parts market alone is projected to reach $100 billion by 2034. The European circular economy already employs more than 4 million people, with repair and maintenance activities accounting for nearly half of those jobs. The question isn't whether the circular economy makes sense—the numbers speak for themselves. The real question is how you actually implement it. And that's where intrapreneurs come in.
Why This Is an Intrapreneur's Game
If you're reading this, you're probably the person in your organization who sees the opportunity while others see only complexity. You're the engineer, the operations manager, or the sustainability lead who understands that circular transformation isn't a theoretical exercise—it's a competitive necessity.
But you also know the challenge: circular manufacturing requires fundamentally different processes than linear production. Collection, inspection, disassembly, variable quality inputs—these demand new capabilities that most manufacturing companies don't have in-house. Standard procedures don't exist because not all products were designed for reuse.
Here's the critical insight: you don't need to build everything yourself. The most successful circular transformations happen through collaboration—manufacturing companies focusing on their core business while partnering with specialized organizations that excel at labor-intensive processes like inspection, dismantling, and quality assessment.
The challenge? Current contacts between manufacturing companies and potential partners remain insufficient. Misunderstandings about working methods, process speed, and expectations derail collaborations before they start. Your job as an intrapreneur is to bridge that gap with solid business cases that demonstrate value for all parties.
Understanding Your Margin of Maneuver
Every organization has a degree of freedom to launch new initiatives—your "margin of maneuver." It depends on four factors: leadership support, available resources, organizational structure, and company culture. Understanding your margin is the first step to effective action.
Start small. Informal experiments require minimal resources but provide invaluable learning. When they succeed, they become proposals for formal implementation. Even with limited authority, you can initiate pilot projects that prove the concept.
The key is matching your initiatives to your actual margin. Don't propose a €5 million remanufacturing facility if you can't even get approval for a €50,000 pilot. Build momentum through small wins that expand your margin over time.
The ReX Framework: Your Circular Roadmap
ReX stands for the most impactful circular value retention strategies: Remanufacture, Refurbish, Recondition, and Repurpose. Think of it as a hierarchy—strategies that preserve the highest possible amount of embedded value rather than downcycling materials into lower-grade applications.
Rethink
Fundamentally questions whether your current approach makes sense. This isn't about minor tweaks—it's about reimagining what you sell. Rolls-Royce doesn't sell jet engines anymore—they sell "power by the hour." The customer pays for flight time, not hardware. Rolls-Royce retains ownership, handles maintenance, repair, and eventual take-back. They capture recurring revenue while ensuring every engine is meticulously maintained and can be remanufactured at end of life. The result? A business model where longevity directly profits the manufacturer. That's rethinking—finding ways to make money while keeping products in use.
Reduce
Means doing more with less—while maintaining or improving what your product delivers. Pure Waste, a Finnish textile company, produces clothing from 100% recycled fibers. Their t-shirt requires just 1.2 liters of water and generates 1.1 kg of CO2. The same shirt made from virgin materials? 1,426 liters of water and 2.1 kg of CO2. By December 2022, Pure Waste had saved nearly 5 billion liters of water and 3 million kg of CO2 emissions. That's not incremental improvement—that's transformation. When you reduce inputs dramatically, you both cut costs and environmental impact simultaneously.
Reuse
Is the simplest form of value retention—and the most immediate. Find a new user for a product that still fulfills its function, and you preserve nearly 100% of its embedded value. Coca-Cola and r.Cup partnered to scale reusable packaging across North American restaurants, music venues, and cinemas. Cups are collected, washed, sanitized, inspected, and repackaged for reuse—eliminating single-use waste entirely while reducing long-term packaging costs. Caterpillar built sophisticated take-back programs for industrial equipment, creating networks of certified pre-owned machines that command premium prices because customers trust the quality. The second-hand market for industrial equipment, construction machinery, and commercial vehicles represents billions in value that never enters the waste stream.
Repair
Fights planned obsolescence—and represents the most direct challenge to linear economics. For decades, manufacturers designed products with limited lifespans to drive repeat purchases. Repair turns that model upside down. When John Deere granted customers the right to repair their own equipment in early 2023, it marked a watershed moment. Farmers had fought for years to fix their own tractors without dealer involvement and expensive markup. The company's shift reflects both regulatory pressure and recognition that repair-friendly approaches build customer loyalty and create new service revenue streams. The Right to Repair movement has gained momentum across multiple jurisdictions, with new regulations requiring manufacturers to make spare parts, documentation, and tools available to independent repair providers. For intrapreneurs, this isn't a threat—it's an opportunity.
Refurbish
Recognizes that "good as new" isn't always necessary—but still delivers quality. Apple, Dell, HP, Samsung, and Amazon all operate certified refurbished programs. These products typically sell at 20-30% discounts while carrying full warranties—winning for budget-conscious consumers while creating additional revenue streams for manufacturers. MUD Jeans takes this further with a rental model: customers pay monthly for denim, returning worn garments for refurbishment and re-circulation. Patagonia's Worn Wear program has become the model for circular approaches in outdoor apparel, combining repair services with a marketplace for used gear—all while significantly boosting brand value. Refurbishment costs far less than new production while capturing most of the original product value.
Remanufacture
Delivers industrial-level value recovery—and where the biggest numbers live. This is the most sophisticated ReX strategy. Completely disassemble a product, inspect and clean every component, replace worn parts, reassemble to original specifications—and you get a product performing identically to new, with equivalent warranty, at 40-60% less cost. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation shows remanufacturing can save 80% energy, 88% water, 92% less chemicals, and 70% less waste compared to new production. ZF, the automotive supplier, operates more than 20 remanufacturing plants worldwide. At just one facility, 40-50 tons of used clutch parts arrive daily ("cores" in industry speak). Between 80-95% are successfully remanufactured and returned to market. The remanufactured automotive parts market alone will reach $100 billion by 2034. That's not a pilot project—that's an industry.
Recondition
Bridges maintenance and renewal—restoring worn components to acceptable working tolerances without full remanufacturing. Think machining bearing surfaces, rethreading worn fasteners, applying wear-resistant coatings. It happens continuously throughout a product's operational life, often during major service intervals. The strategic importance? It's frequently the most cost-effective intervention—requiring less investment than remanufacturing while delivering significant life extension. For manufacturers, offering reconditioning services creates ongoing customer relationships and builds the technical knowledge needed for more comprehensive ReX activities. When you understand how to recondition, you understand how to design for longevity.
Repurpose
Transforms products into something new—when their original purpose becomes obsolete but components remain valuable. The key insight: value isn't in the product's original function—it's in the materials, components, and manufacturing quality that went into creating it. Tracegrow, a Finnish company, produces organic certified fertilizers from used alkaline batteries. Their patented process extracts micronutrients from recycled batteries and industrial side streams, creating products that reduce carbon emissions compared to traditional fertilizer production while enhancing crop productivity. They looked at "waste" and saw raw materials. Battery packs from electric vehicles find second lives in stationary energy storage. Industrial equipment designed for one application may have components suitable for entirely different uses. Repurposing requires thinking beyond immediate product categories.
Recycle
Represents the baseline—the value floor after higher-value strategies are exhausted. When products cannot be economically reused, repaired, refurbished, remanufactured, reconditioned, or repurposed, recycling recovers material value that would otherwise be lost. The distinction matters enormously: recycling aluminum requires only about 5% of the energy needed to produce new aluminum from bauxite. But that 5% still represents significant energy consumption. Compare that to remanufacturing, which might require no new aluminum at all—the original material continues in productive use indefinitely. For manufacturers, strategic question isn't whether to recycle, but how to design products so materials can be easily separated and recovered at end of life. Avoid material combinations difficult to separate. Label plastics. Minimize hazardous materials.
Making It Real: Your Action Plan
You don't need permission to start learning.
Begin by mapping your products against the ReX framework. Which strategies apply? Where's the highest embedded value? What would collection and reverse logistics look like?
Talk to potential partners—social enterprises, specialized remanufacturers, logistics providers. Understand their capabilities and constraints. Build relationships before you need them.
Calculate the business case. Use real numbers: material costs, labor rates, market prices for remanufactured products. The €15-24 billion opportunity in Belgium didn't come from wishful thinking—it came from rigorous analysis of actual circular value chains.
Start a pilot. Pick one product line, one process, one partnership. Prove the concept. Document the results. Use success to expand your margin of maneuver.
This is a new market reality that is happening with or without you. The question for you as an intrapreneur isn't whether to engage with circular approaches. It's how quickly you can develop the capabilities needed to compete in a market where value retention becomes as important as value creation.
The companies capturing this opportunity aren't waiting for perfect conditions or complete organizational buy-in. They're starting small, proving value, and scaling what works. They're building partnerships that leverage complementary strengths. They're treating circular transformation not as a sustainability initiative but as a competitive strategy.
The €15-24 billion opportunity is real. The question is: who in your organization will claim it?
Sources
Circularity Gap Report 2024 - Netherlands & Belgium: https://www.circularitygap.world/
European Environment Agency - Circular Economy: https://www.eea.europa.eu/
Sirris ReX Framework: https://www.sirris.be/en/circular-economy/rex-strategies
Ellen MacArthur Foundation - Remanufacturing: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/
