Circularity at Airbus: How SecondLife Cuts Waste and Costs
How can a reuse marketplace for unused industrial assets reduce costs and waste at scale?
In this episode, Nathalie Clement, Amanda Fiorillo, and Bernd Schmid from Airbus Defence and Space explain how Airbus built SecondLife, a digital platform where employees trade unused equipment. In three years, 160 tons of waste were avoided and 1,600 tons of CO₂ were saved.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- How Airbus structured a three-step reuse strategy: internal marketplace, external resale and supplier buyback, and donation as a last resort
- Why the financial case is central: a 150% ROI over three years and €1.5 billion in asset value exchanged internally
- How KPIs turned a pilot into a scalable system across the company
Featured in this episode is also Heiko Tullney from Indeed Innovation as co-host. This is the final episode of the Irresistible Circular Business series, produced in partnership with Indeed Innovation, the global design and innovation firm pioneering the circular economy.
Video Impression
People
Nathalie Clement, Environmental Projects Coordinator
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathalie-clement-mac-farlane-98081b2/
Amanda Fiorillo, Business Digital Improver for Industrial Systems
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-fiorillo-2a83561/
Bernd Schmid, Program Manager Transformation Space Systems at Airbus
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernd-schmid/
Heiko Tullney, Executive Director at Indeed Innovation
https://www.linkedin.com/in/heiko-tullney/
Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/
Chapters
00:00 Intro
04:31 Airbus and Its Circularity Strategy
07:29 How SecondLife Started and How It Works
15:45 Getting Buy-In and Building Internal Traction
22:12 Commercial and Circular Impact
25:51 External Resale: Strategy, Buyers, and Compliance
37:05 External Commercial Impact and Donation
41:40 What Makes SecondLife Irresistible
42:55 Outro
About
Airbus is one of the world’s largest aerospace and defence companies, designing and manufacturing commercial aircraft, helicopters, military transports, and satellites. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company generated €69.2 billion in revenue in 2024 and employs around 150,000 people across more than 180 countries.
Convinced that digital technology is a powerful accelerator for sustainable transformation, Airbus developed SecondLife, an internal digital marketplace that allows employees to give unused industrial assets a new purpose rather than sending them to waste. The platform is part of Airbus’s broader “Digital for Green” strategy and has expanded across all major divisions, with ambitions to eventually open to external partners.
Further Links
ReCommerce Playbook https://www.indeed-innovation.com/the-recommerce-playbook-from-returns-to-revenue/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro
Nathalie Clement: The employees reusing, recycling unused assets. With that, it reduced the cost, it reduced the waste, even sometimes generating revenues while promoting sustainability and collaboration. So this is a win-win approach.
Jingle: My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.
Patrick Hypscher: Here we are again with our last episode of Irresistible Circular Business, the series that showcases the business practices that deliver irresistible commercial and circular results. Sponsoring partner of the series is Indeed Innovation, the global design and innovation firm pioneering the circular economy. You know it by now. In each episode, a member of the Indeed Innovation team joins me as a co-host. In our last episode, Breitling gave an impressive example of what it means to drive circularity in a company with lasting products and a rich heritage. Today we switched from revenue to costs and learn how one of the biggest aerospace and defense companies saves resources and money. Normally I tell you to sign up for the newsletter to get the one-page summary of this conversation. I don’t do that today. I would rather ask you to provide some feedback on the last episodes, this series, or Circularity.fm in general. Send me an email to contact@circularity.fm or reach out via LinkedIn. And if you just like what you hear or see, leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Patrick Hypscher: With an academic background in business management, she started her career as a consultant for Accenture before joining Airbus about 23 years ago. After many years in the Airbus civil aircraft division, she joined Airbus Defense and Space, where she is the environmental projects coordinator in defense and space production areas. Thanks for bringing all the people together here in the world. Welcome, Nathalie.
Nathalie Clement: Thank you, Patrick.
Patrick Hypscher: Our second guest is an engineer by training and worked in software engineering in the mobile device industry before joining Airbus 16 years ago. Her role is business digital improver for industrial systems. I’m really happy to have her here today. Welcome, Amanda.
Amanda A. Fiorillo: I’m happy to be there with you.
Patrick Hypscher: Wonderful. And our third guest served for 13 years in the German military, the Bundeswehr, and at that time also studied there and gained his degree in business management. He ultimately joined Airbus also 23 years ago and had various finance positions, among them managing director and CFO of an Airbus subsidiary. He introduced himself as the finance guy, and right now he is the program manager transformation space systems at Airbus Defense and Space. Welcome, Bernd.
Bernd B. Schmid: Thank you very much for having me.
Patrick Hypscher: And my co-host of this last episode of our series is also the one we started this series with. He is founding member and executive director at Indeed Innovation and helps companies on their transformation toward circular ecosystems. Welcome, Heiko.
Heiko Tullney: Hello everyone and hello Patrick. Here we are again. So nice to see you all. Thanks for having me. I’m really happy to be here and curious to hear what you all have to share. Thanks. So I’m really looking forward to our conversation because in the last five episodes we looked at the revenue side of circularity and circular practices and now we look more on the cost and cash flow side. But before we do so, since we talk about Airbus and Airbus is not a startup anymore, not even a small company, Nathalie, can you give us an overview about the main business divisions of Airbus?
[00:04:31] Airbus and Its Circularity Strategy
Nathalie Clement: So of course, Patrick. Airbus is the global leader for the aerospace industry and it operates through different business divisions. Of course, the most famous is Airbus Commercial Aircraft, which aims at designing, manufacturing and selling commercial aircraft like the A320neo or the A350. The second business division is Helicopters, which offers a wide range of civil and military helicopters that provide solutions for transport, emergency search, rescue and defense missions. And the final one is Defense and Space. This division focuses more on military aircraft and drones and spacecraft, satellites, orbital systems and the associated services.
Patrick Hypscher: All right, that’s quite a lot. And I mean, you are active all around the world and even in space. So I wonder, how does your circularity strategy look like?
Nathalie Clement: So Airbus as a group has many different initiatives around circularity, including design for circularity, material efficiency and end-of-life management. But I think today the idea is to highlight a specific initiative that we launched, focusing on extending the use of unused material. The strategy is in three stages, if I may. When we have an unused asset like tooling or containers, our first step is to offer it to other teams within Airbus through a digital marketplace. If we don’t find interest internally, then we seek external options, whether suppliers or external local companies who could be interested to purchase either the tool or the raw material for reuse or recycling. And as a final stage, if those efforts are unsuccessful, then we explore donation options, either to universities, schools or medical centers. The idea of the approach is that we aim to minimize waste, avoid scrapping and reduce costs wherever it is possible.
[00:07:29] How SecondLife Started and How It Works
Heiko Tullney: That sounds really like a very important and relevant aspect that you are touching here and looks very much, which I really love, is looking into your own operations and really keeping value, which is nice and really relevant. So Amanda, maybe you can give us a bit more of a background. How did all this start? What was the initiation of all this?
Amanda A. Fiorillo: The story I would say of SecondLife is split more or less into three major steps. So the first step was from 2018. It was the genesis of the project during almost two years. A French engineer looking to repurpose unused equipment in his lab submitted his idea to a Airbus research and technology incubator and he won an award that allowed him to launch the very first digital proof of concept. He tested it and valorized 100 assets. Then came, as you know, the COVID crisis. So during almost two years the project was stopped. From 2022, we had the opportunity to get some new budget funding, redesigned the full idea to make it more user friendly and to make it accessible to all Airbus employees. And this new digital solution was launched in early 2023, so more or less three years ago. And during that period we learned in fact a lot, because we discovered the business processes, we discovered the way to organize exchanges, and in fact it was really three years of learning. And we could say that now we are at the point that we are ready to be in a run mode, as we say in digital projects, to be at scale. So this tool is now recognized as a key contributor and a digital enabler to contribute to the waste reduction strategy of Airbus.
Patrick Hypscher: So now we understand what your journey was, but give us a bit more of a background. How does this initiative, this digital marketplace, how does it work? What is the principle behind it?
Amanda A. Fiorillo: You know, Airbus Group is a huge company but it is a set of local companies and we have to consider each local company, with the local rules, with local people, etc. So that is part of the specificities. And now I can get into how it works. So we have more or less four steps. The first step would be for someone who no longer needs an asset: the ad creation. So an employee would fill out a standard form about the asset. They would explain in a short description what the physical information of the asset is. They would add pictures, but also they would add some elements on the financial status, which is very important because we need to know if the amortization of the asset is done or not. The second part would be the ad validation thanks to a local moderator. So generally a moderator is local to a legal entity. They would check the accuracy of the information but also they would add or connect a category which is called the AEG. In fact, this category and classification is key to determine the CO2 equivalent of an equipment. This methodology is official and recognized in the aerospace industry and this methodology is in fact based on the initial price of an asset and the classification, and thanks to that we would have a CO2 equivalent which is an approximation, but nevertheless we have the equivalent. And after this step, as soon as it is authorized, the asset and the ad is visible and published on the marketplace. So that is the second part. The third part is in fact related to the request. Now someone is interested in the asset. So they would request the asset. The moderator would have the responsibility to assess the relevancy of the exchange as well. So they would connect the offerer and the requester but also they would perform some basic controls on the asset: security, financial status and logistic possibilities. So that is key. This step is really what we call the secure part. We need to control and check whether the exchange is possible and maybe to organize a sale. It can be a sale, it can be a free exchange, or a donation externally to Airbus as well. And we authorize the transfer at this step. The fourth step is really more or less the end of the process. You found a solution, a transport solution, and as soon as the asset has arrived at the final destination, in the digital workflow, we ask the people to close the exchange properly in the tool to monitor the impact of the exchange in terms of sustainability KPIs. And at any stage and at any step, the offerer or the requester, the two people that are involved in an exchange, can cancel the exchange. And the moderator can also refuse an exchange for any reason. So that is more or less how it works. It might be complex but we need to secure the exchange.
Heiko Tullney: And finally you are also combining the digital workflow with a physical one, because you are also shipping the stuff. And I said “stuff” but you mentioned “assets.” So let’s try and make it a bit more tangible for all of us, because maybe the listeners here think of things like I do, like: is it astronaut suits? Is it satellites? Or what is it? Maybe you can give us some examples of what product categories are traded.
Amanda A. Fiorillo: So in our marketplace, our wonderful marketplace at Airbus, we handle in fact non-flying assets. This includes industrial equipment, toolings, some IT hardware, office furniture. So I can give you more examples. We can find some transport containers, trolleys, forklifts, milling and drilling machines, IT cables, screens, keyboards, but also some very particular equipment such as small aircraft mockups and aircraft cutoffs from manufacturing. So that is more or less what we can find. But what we don’t manage in fact is sensitive items such as flying parts or export control goods.
Heiko Tullney: That makes a whole lot of sense. Absolutely. And you need to take care about the flying stuff because of regulations too, for sure. We are all happy that you take care of that. I mean, great to hear that story, which is nice. I want to get back to where it all started because, sure, we can all imagine that there is a ton of ideas that everyone working at Airbus constantly has on a daily basis. But how did you manage to make all this happen? Like, starting that initiative, because getting from an idea to somewhere means that, what have you been promoting? What benefits did you promise to management to get approval to start all this?
[00:15:45] Getting Buy-In and Building Internal Traction
Amanda A. Fiorillo: It is a very good question. In fact, I think we never promised the moon. I think we didn’t have the ability to forecast the future. But what we were convinced about is in fact the impact of such an idea, and we were really convinced that the application would bring benefits in various areas, such as sustainability impact through waste savings, but also the CO2 equivalent savings. Second aspect: financial savings, for sure, by avoiding buying a new asset. And also to provide employee satisfaction, something that you don’t measure directly but you see the popularity through the number of users and the number of exchanges and so on. So satisfaction is also part of the benefits. I would say that for the promises, we were expecting to make it more robust, to make it more accessible, user friendly, and with a digital and secure workflow. And that is where my leaders at Commercial Digital for Operations agreed to fund a new solution after the COVID crisis, to make it really bigger and robust. And sure, during three years we accompanied the change, and I think that is more or less what the end users were expecting. It is not only an application. We need as well to bring people along. It is not, you know, digital alone does not make the difference. What makes the difference is digital and people. So we need to be here to accompany the change, to accompany the people, to explain how the processes were working, how it is possible to valorize and reuse equipment and just to save them instead of throwing them away, because that is also a part of the functionality and the possibilities of the tool. So we see the popularity of the tool through this new way of working, and now we are at the turning point where, as I said, the solution is positioning at central level to support the strategy of Airbus to decrease waste. We learned by doing, and we really, we didn’t promise the moon as I said, but we were convinced. By doing, we demonstrated that the figures were really impressive.
Heiko Tullney: Well, that is pretty convincing. Absolutely. I think you make a good point here saying that it is also coming from people. So there is the engineer who started it, then you were convincing someone from the leadership, and that is all great to start off with. But you mentioned the thing that the platform was growing from there. So in growing and scaling, that is part of the convincing activities. So how did you manage, what we could call internal marketing, or what was crucial to get the internal traction to make it grow?
Amanda A. Fiorillo: It is a very good question. So first we attracted, as I said, the financial funding, and for sure it was crucial to be convinced by the technical solution which was integrated in our IT standards. So that was key to make it robust, as I said, to improve the user experience. And as soon as the digital part was ready, we leveraged on the change because to attract new users, to attract new moderators, you need to accompany them. As I said, during the three years we discovered a lot of the businesses, the processes and so on. And the increase was regular, more or less 800 new users per month during three years. So it is quite amazing. And also we increased the impact of the solution and we constantly communicated on the impact of the solution. We wrote some articles on the Airbus Hub. We also animated a user community to attract people and to boost the solution, to make the buzz. That is what we did with our limited workforce. I would say I think we did a great journey because we constantly increased the frequency of use of the tool. We highlighted the number of new users every month. We highlighted the success stories of the exchanges. We also recruited champions. We recruited moderators locally. I think that is part of the success of the platform as well, and to make the exchanges visible, we developed new KPIs integrated in the tool. So we developed collective KPIs to make visible the global figures, meaning the number of users, the number of successful exchanges, but also the impact of the exchanges on the waste reduction but also on the CO2 equivalent information. That was an additional motivation and the concrete results of what is ongoing. And also to set some objectives on a yearly basis. So we have directly in the tool the objective to save a set amount of kilograms of assets every year, and that is part of the collective objective to really onboard new people.
[00:22:12] Commercial and Circular Impact
Heiko Tullney: Thank you, Amanda, for mentioning a point that seems of super relevancy for all of our listeners, which is KPIs. You grew the platform, that is nice, and you already mentioned 20% less waste. But KPIs are typically attached to commercial impacts. Can you share something on that, or maybe name some KPIs related to that, when someone asks about the commercial side of this?
Amanda A. Fiorillo: We need figures to monitor and to pilot such a marketplace. So it is now three years that the platform is running. We have more than 24,000 users. So that is key. They logged in at least once in the tool, but we have a solid base of active users, around 500 users that are really active. They are using the platform several times to offer or to request. So we have this solid base of people. And then those people in fact created more or less 1,000 ads, which is quite interesting, and a third of them were successfully completed and contributed to the sustainability figures. So this saved 160 tons of waste during three years, which is equivalent to 1,600 tons of CO2. So that is for the sustainability part. And on the financial side, we know that more or less those 1,000 ads saved, 3,300 assets were exchanged and saved. And it is interesting to know that those assets had a value at their initial price. So when they were new, their value was around 4.6 million euros. But you understand that as we have some secondhand assets, and some of them might be new when they are exchanged on the marketplace, but sometimes they are very old. So we globally estimate that we increase the lifespan of the asset by a third. So we consider that we make financial savings equivalent to a third of the new price. So as I said, it is around probably 1.5 million euros that represents the value of the secondhand assets in terms of financial aspect. We have many other benefits as well. We could say that we avoid the treatment of the waste. We avoid the square meters that are blocked to store the assets. So we have other benefits.
Heiko Tullney: Well, that is already impressive. And thanks for sharing all these details because it really indicates and showcases how much value sits in such an initiative, which is really amazing. Really good. I can imagine, because you are looking to your own teams, and then inside Airbus maybe there are one or two occasions where there is no internal demand for a given asset that you have been sharing. Maybe you need to look somewhere else. And I think Bernd knows more about this. Can you tell us a little bit more about the external side of this initiative?
[00:25:51] External Resale: Strategy, Buyers, and Compliance
Bernd B. Schmid: Yes, thanks for the question, Heiko. And I need to admit I am really a big fan of that platform from the beginning, by the way. I was promoting it a lot. But maybe sometimes it can happen that we do not find a match inside Airbus with all the equipment which is offered there, and we should not give up then. So we move to what we could call a kind of a two-alternative strategy. So we could firstly look at reselling it. All the equipment we have here on stock, we can ask: can this item still do the job it was built for in another industry? And that is also happening. If yes, we find an external buyer who can use it for different purposes. Or if it is highly specialized, we look at the second alternative, which is a supplier buyback. You know, these are very expensive items sometimes, and so we go back to the original manufacturers and negotiate with them to take it back, or refurbish it, or reclaim the high-value components which are included there. So all this can happen. I like to think of it as a relay race. If your internal teams cannot take the baton, we don’t drop it. So we continue, and our people are really eager to find alternative solutions. We find maybe an external partner who is ready to run for it. The goal is always to keep that material moving and keep it out of the scrap heap for as long as possible, and do something with it. Never give up.
Heiko Tullney: I think it is a very interesting perspective that you take here, looking into the original manufacturers as well, which maybe have an interest in that, especially when I think of investment goods like industrial machinery. So can you maybe point out what kind of potential buyers are out there that are interested? What can we imagine there?
Bernd B. Schmid: Yes, sure. It really depends on the kind of category of the equipment, but it is a much broader market than you might think. Sometimes we have interest from very different industries where we did not think of it. And for these high-value products we have in our portfolio, often the best buyer is the original supplier. So they might be interested in a buyback to refurbish the item and resell it at a more competitive price point afterwards. And what is important for us is always to look at the industrial company we are dealing with, so that it is always secured that the industrial property or IP aspects are respected. Well, I can give a recent example we had. So for example, battery cells, you know, this is important everywhere, it is a very important and high-value asset, and we were able to resell those to other companies. We did not use them anymore and they were quite new, so we could give them to other companies. They use them in their products, or to a specialized broker. Then for items that have not reached the end of their functional life, we work with so-called revalorization companies. They are not looking for the tool itself but they are looking for the treasure inside. So the aluminum, the copper, all the rare metals which can be found in the electronics, and we make sure that those materials go back into the global supply chain of their companies.
Heiko Tullney: That is great. Thanks for sharing the example, especially with the batteries, which is of high interest at this very moment. I wonder, because batteries are a typical thing everyone can imagine, how do you evaluate the value? How do you qualify, for example, batteries to be part of this market and to be interesting or appealing for your outside buyers?
Bernd B. Schmid: It is less about the age I would say and more about how it can be used. What is the best use? If it is a relatively new product, then our priority is to sell it for the original industrial use, or we want it to keep doing what it was built for. However for older assets, we shift our focus more to the material value, which is so important at the moment, for all that is available internally in those products. So at that stage we are reselling it for the high-grade aluminum or stainless steel it contains. It is about matching the assets to the right secondary market at the right time. So what we also have in our portfolio, for example, is so-called EGSE, Electrical Ground Support Equipment, which we use to build our satellites. These are really complex test racks used for our satellites. So we had several units that were no longer required for our missions and right now we are in commercial discussions to specialize these. So maybe they use them for rentals as well, and not only to deconstruct these kinds of racks, but also to rent them to other companies.
Heiko Tullney: You make a good point here which is super interesting, especially when it comes to this very specialized and high-value equipment. I can imagine there is a lot of interest in that outside Airbus even. So I wonder, because you cannot be everywhere, even the moderator of that marketplace cannot be everywhere. So can everyone put anything into that marketplace? How does that work? And maybe a second part to that question: can everyone see it from the outside, or do you go and sell it? How does that work?
Bernd B. Schmid: Definitely not. So because we are Airbus and we have very strict compliance and safety standards, every external sale of course needs to be supported by our legal, commercial, ethics and compliance teams. We use a process called Know Your Customer and we do agreements with them to ensure always that we are dealing with reputable partners. It is a professional and controlled process that ensures circularity does not come at the cost of compliance. So that is super important for us.
Heiko Tullney: When we talk about the marketplace, what comes to mind first is, oh, that is something like eBay or whatever, right? So I put my stuff in there, then someone will purchase it, fine, done. But it is not that simple. And that makes total sense because the equipment that you are putting into the marketplace is not simple. But still, I wonder, when I think of forklifts for example, if you put these in the marketplace and someone outside is interested, how do you negotiate the price point or how much time do you spend to get that out? Is it like, okay, we are just happy to get rid of it, just take it? Or how does that work?
Bernd B. Schmid: Well, you are talking to a finance guy, and there is always finance behind. So it always must be a kind of business case, what we do. And we could call it a kind of efficiency challenge. And I think to solve this we have structured two specific buyback channels, one for raw materials such as metals and one for electronics. So there are different prices and different markets. We have trusted partners ready to take these materials so that we do not need to start from scratch every time. And remember, it is not just about the sale price. Of course we would like to be reimbursed for all the cost we had, but by avoiding scrapping we also save significantly on waste disposal costs, and it is always a win-win. So this needs to be secured, for example when we deconstruct big boxes or containers to get the nails out, etc. This needs to always be secure, that it is a kind of economic case, and we get a return on the material and avoid a bill for the bin, I would say. So we always get something back and this needs to be in an economic balance.
Heiko Tullney: Sure. So that also means that you are kind of not only qualifying the equipment but you are processing it in a way. Because that is what I was wondering about as well. Sure, the one thing is making an offering to outside partners. The other one is, how do you ensure that the quality and the liability of the products matches the demands or what your customers or partners are expecting? How do you match that? Because I guess it is different from a typical consumer platform where you have stars, like one star or five stars. Is there something comparable?
Bernd B. Schmid: Yes, that is super important. So we are Airbus, as I said before, and safety is our number one priority everywhere. Toward any risks we have a firm rule. So we never sell safety-critical equipment, such as ladders or lifting platforms, to external parties. For everything else, we sell it strictly as is, of course, like this is standard with a robust, we can call it, secondhand contract developed with our legal teams. And this clear boundary allows us to be circular without compromising our responsibility. So it always needs to be clear.
Heiko Tullney: Yeah, that makes sense. And when you do a good job on that one, then it will for sure grow further. And I think that is what everyone is also interested in. So you started internally and then you are also looking to the outside, which is the aspect of growing that platform, which makes it even stronger over time. So maybe you can share a bit of the impact that you have been creating on the platform with commercial aspects, or the impact overall from the external side. Is it comparable to the internal side?
[00:37:05] External Commercial Impact and Donation
Bernd B. Schmid: Well, so the impact: we did last year a kind of spring cleaning in all our warehouses in Defense and Space, and it was really measurable and very real. So I would give you a number of about 130 tons of products which we revalorized across France and the UK, with 60 tons of that being directly sold. So you saw a lot of trucks there with a lot of equipment going out and sold. Then from a financial perspective, I would say it is not that huge. This is probably a six-digit euro revenue what we did. But on the other side, we avoided a lot of scrapping costs, and this was really a business case for a financial guy like me. So it is super important and it is a really powerful combination. A positive financial impact for the company and a win for sustainability, all while keeping another 100 tons of material in a continuous loop. And that makes us fine. It was very well perceived by our employees. And what we intend to do now to scale this further is to explore also other professional auction platforms, on the professional side, not eBay, but the more professional platforms we can use here.
Heiko Tullney: Wonderful. So especially thanks to Amanda and Bernd: Amanda for sharing how you keep the value of the assets inside Airbus, and then Bernd for exploring what happens if there is no internal demand and how we can still capture the value of non-flying assets outside. And Bernd, you also mentioned of course that even for some materials or components it is more about the scrap value. But now, question to Nathalie: what happens with the ads and the products where you don’t find anyone internally or externally who wants to buy that from you?
Nathalie Clement: Yes. So if we cannot find internal users or external opportunities, we reach the third stage of our strategy, which is to explore donation options. Of course at Airbus, donation is subject to a rigorous check. And I will make the bridge with what Bernd was saying for customers. We have a very strong scrutiny of the potential associations or charities to whom we want to donate, an ethics and compliance scrutiny. And like for potential external customers, we also complement this check with a donation agreement, which is a legal framework that outlines the requirements for a secondhand exchange or secondhand usage of the assets. To give you a little insight and to be factual: in Airbus Defense and Space, thanks to the spring cleaning, we were able to donate around 21 tons of furniture to rehabilitation associations or hospitals, and around 8.5 tons of containers to charities. Of course, it is nothing compared to what Bernd was explaining, but I often have in mind that every drop counts.
Heiko Tullney: Fantastic. It is again impressive to see how many different strategies you use and combine, and kind of cascade depending on value and of course security and your other criteria. And you already gave an idea of the commercial value and of course also the strategic value of that. But Nathalie, what makes SecondLife and all the activities around that, what makes it irresistible for Airbus?
[00:41:40] What Makes SecondLife Irresistible
Nathalie Clement: Thanks for the good question. The SecondLife platform and even all the activities we have around circularity in Airbus is irresistible for Airbus because, for me, it fosters a circular mindset and behavior amongst the different employees of Airbus. The employees reusing, recycling unused assets, and of course with that it reduces the cost, it reduces the waste, even sometimes generating revenues while promoting sustainability and collaboration. So this is a win-win approach.
Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, once again fantastic to see what you have managed to build up across divisions, across countries. So Heiko, I want to turn to you because once again not every company is like Airbus, but I am pretty sure you spotted some aspects that help other companies to pull something like that off the ground. So what is your take: when do these kinds of marketplaces for equipment or excess materials, when do they work?
[00:42:55] Outro
Heiko Tullney: I think Nathalie made a good point here, saying that SecondLife is attached to the value, and that is the most important part. I really love this story that you shared in the beginning: there is someone surrounded by value asking the question, why don’t we do something good with that? I mean, if you answer that question, I think that is when these marketplaces start to work. There is value, so utilize it and do something with it. And especially when you can then think of it growing internally, the relevancy internally is there, and maybe that even turns to external partners too, which is the key to this.
Patrick Hypscher: Clear. We didn’t hear a lot of barriers, right? It is more like how the colleagues managed to overcome them. But I am pretty sure you listened carefully. What are the barriers that need to be overcome?
Heiko Tullney: Yes. I think your story here is a really awesome story in terms of there were no barriers. It just happened, lean and fluent. And I think that is because you do a great job and because you identified the value and the relevancy of the stuff, which really brings down the barriers. I mean, the challenges that I see, and you solve them pretty well, is like getting decision makers on board. Can that person who identified an idea promote it to at least one key person inside the ecosystem? And then even go further, and that is why you did a great job: the internal marketing, you promoted it, you let everyone participate. You made it transparent to everyone. I think this is what others may consider a barrier. You have been doing a great job really utilizing that and making it grow from here. So that is what I think is super relevant for everyone: find the right person to make that happen.
Patrick Hypscher: And my last question, Heiko: if I found the right person internally on the management level, what is the pitch for such a marketplace?
Heiko Tullney: I think Bernd made the best pitch. He said: there is no bill for the bin. I mean, honestly, if I would approach someone and say, here we have some stuff, we can just put it in a bin, or we can make money with that, what would be the answer? And I think that contribution to the business is more than clear. It could be internally, it could be efficiency: let’s reutilize stuff that we already own. That is a no-brainer. But also to the outside: look, even if we cannot use it here, maybe there is someone outside. And I think that is obvious especially when you think of industrial equipment. The numbers speak for themselves. It has a business impact, and that is what you did right here.
Patrick Hypscher: Nathalie, Amanda, Bernd, congratulations for what you have achieved and thanks for sharing your experience with us today.
Nathalie Clement: Thank you very much.
Amanda A. Fiorillo: Thank you for the invite. I am happy to be there.
Bernd B. Schmid: Thanks everyone.
Patrick Hypscher: This is the end of our series Irresistible Circular Business, in sponsoring partnership with Indeed Innovation, the global design and innovation firm pioneering the circular economy. Doing it together with the experts from Indeed Innovation was an innovation for me. Let me know how you liked having two co-hosts by sending an email to contact@circularity.fm or send me a private message via LinkedIn. In the next series, we will take a totally different and unusual perspective, the one of insurance companies. There are experts in risk, in fixing things, and preserving value. A perfect starting point to dig deeper. In any case, let’s drive a profitable circular economy. And please don’t forget, the most abundant renewable resource is your imagination.
Jingle: My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.