Paper info

The Consumer's Changing Role - The Case Of Recycling

Helén Anderson and Maria Huge Brodin

The paper was published at the 19th IMP-conference in Lugano, Switzerland in 2003.

We claim that the consumer expression is tricky already when chains are used as a metaphor for forward and reverse flows. In a recycling context we also see that the consumer takes both the role of a buyer and a supplier, irrespective whether seen as a single household or as one "collective" actor. However, will the buyer/seller relationship be valid when talking of households as scrap collectors and -suppliers? We conclude that the household may very well qualify as a supplier, even though the seller concept is not really covered by traditional economic theory in the case of raw-material suppliers when the material is secondary or scrap.