Improving sustainability performance of the Italian professional printers supply chain

Because of excessive use, resources are becoming scarcer and more expensive. This calls for a shift from our current economic model, based on the linear approach of “take, make, consume, dispose”, to the paradigm of circular economy, which maintains the value of products, materials and resources in the economy while eliminating waste. Printers for professional use, which are printers that are sold to public or private organizations, are perfect candidates for the application of circular business models. Since decades, these printers have been rented with a “pay-per-use” business model, where customers do not own the printers but pay depending on utilization. Professional printers’ supply chains are, however, scarcely studied in literature, and little is known on how to reap the full potential of circular business models. Therefore, this research sheds light on the supply chain of these products, discusses strengths and weaknesses of the current situation, and derives suggestions to the sector how to move towards a wider application of circular economy, while reaching higher environmental sustainability performance. To this aim, we conducted 14 interviews with all types of actors in the professional printer supply chain. With the collected data, we could map the whole supply chain and draw conclusions on how to improve circular economy and sustainability performance. Although retailers are key actors in the Italian second-hand market, as they contribute to the collection of products at the end of their lifecycle, the shift to circular economy requires the active involvement of all supply chain actors. Moreover, given that many printers are exported, we advocate high attention to how printers are disposed at the end of their life at global level.