ABSTRACT
Customer needs and desires must be ascertained, insurance and liability issues must be addressed, employee training must be ongoing, and an incentive must be provided for customers to return leased products to the lessor after use. If these issues are not addressed, the demands of Extended Producer Responsibility legislation, which requires manufacturers to take back their products after use or face legal consequences, can be difficult to achieve. Many researchers credit the Xerox corporation with pioneering cradle-to-cradle practices in the 1980s by leasing photocopiers instead of selling them. The idea was to provide the company with a reliable source of parts and materials that could be used in remanufacturing 'closed-loop' processes or 'lake economy’. Sometimes a customer will purchase a leased product at the end of the lease term and never return it to the manufacturer. Similarly, after a transfer of ownership, the customer may sell the leased product on the second-hand market.
