About the Reuse Impact Calculator
The Washington State Reuse Impact Calculator (RIC) integrates extensive data on product categorizations, weights, and material families, alongside environmental emissions factors and key economic and social data points. Users can efficiently assess the environmental, economic, and social impacts associated with reusing, repairing, and sharing a wide range of products. The primary objective of the RIC is to establish a standardized framework that enables consistent measurement, meaningful comparisons, and a deeper evaluation of the benefits of reuse, repair, and sharing over conventional replacement.
This tool serves a wide range of users—including government agencies, small businesses, community groups, and nonprofit organizations—by equipping them with clear, accessible, and credible impact data. It supports local organizations in improving their internal reporting, grant writing, and storytelling efforts, while also aggregating this information to generate cumulative, statewide data. This enables a broader understanding and quantification of the full scope and value of reuse, repair, and sharing activities across Washington State.
The WA RIC was developed in partnership between Hyloh and Repair x Reuse Washington with funding provided by the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Recycling Market Development Center. Version 1.0 was completed and released in August 2025.
The Inspiration and Development Process
This project is inspired and informed by WA’s repair & reuse practitioners in the nonprofit, business, and governmental sectors to address obstacles in communicating the value of their work which impedes investment in and growth of these efforts.
Some of these challenges include:
- Expense (e.g. commissioning impact reports),
- Lack of capacity (time, technology, internal expertise),
- Inconsistent or irrelevant metrics and models
Using a qualitative research approach, the team conducted focus groups and in-depth subject-matter-expert (SME) interviews in addition to distributing an email-based survey to network contacts in multiple sectors. Our goal was to understand the data landscape and user needs across Washington's reuse, repair, rental, and sharing ecosystem to inform the development of a standardized impact calculator.
Key Questions Explored:
- What insights could better data unlock?
- How would increased visibility drive greater impact?
- How could a data tool support funding, advocacy, or efficiency?
Through this process we were able to identify both commonalities and nuances and understand a variety of organizational operations and pain points.
Defining Reuse
The term “reuse” can have a range of definitions. For the purposes of the RIC, the following standardized definitions are used for “reuse,” “repair,” and “rental” as they appear throughout the tool.
Reuse: the practice of using an item more than once in its original form—either for the same purpose or a new one—instead of discarding it at the end of its useful life. This includes surplus or non sellable items that would otherwise be disposed of. Reuse can also be part of a broader mission, such as an animal shelter accepting used linens, leashes, or surplus dog food, even if reuse is not the organization’s primary purpose.
Repair: the process of restoring a broken, damaged, or malfunctioning item to a usable condition by fixing faults or replacing parts, allowing it to function as intended rather than be discarded. This includes businesses dedicated solely to repair, as well as organizations that offer routine or occasional repair services as part of their operations.
Rental: a model that provides temporary access to usable products, goods, or resources without transferring ownership or need for new purchases. It includes all forms of sharing, lending, and borrowing. It can involve payment, such as membership or usage fees, or operate through free or honor-based systems like lending libraries, as well as varying levels of systematic organization.
Product Categorization + Classification
The RIC’s product categorization system includes 259 individual products grouped into 18 overarching categories. To develop this list, we used the Global Product Classification (GPC) system as a reference to ensure coverage of the most commonly reused items. Each product entry includes a name that helped us group similar items—those with similar structures or functions—into the same category. For example, strollers, double strollers, and umbrella strollers are all considered variations of a single product type.
Once each product was placed under an overall category, we then assigned a sub-category that helps to describe the product’s use.
Each product and category was then assigned all applicable material families, which are a set of broad groupings of materials with similar properties or compositions, used to classify what products are made from. Examples include metals, plastics, textiles, and wood.
Lastly, each product and category were assigned average weights and retail prices obtained from virtual field studies.
Background Data
The RIC is designed to help users efficiently assess the environmental, economic, and social impacts of reusing, repairing, and sharing a wide range of products. Some impacts are calculated using fixed values built into the tool’s backend, while others are drawn directly from cumulative data provided by participating organizations—for example, the total number of borrowers reported by lending libraries across Washington State. The following section outlines the types of impacts calculated and indicates where fixed backend values were used.
Environmental
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Savings: In the current 1.0 version of the WA RIC, the environmental impacts are calculated utilizing emissions factors courtesy of the Fixometer. With further resources, we hope to expand these emissions factors to be more detailed and accurate. The numbers for this impact are reported in kgCO2e.
Weight: this is a cumulative weight utilizing either the average weights assigned for each product within the RIC or weights provided by the organizations. The numbers for this impact are reported in pounds.
Item Count: this is a cumulative number of items based on the quantities organizations note in their data.
Social
Patrons and Participants: a cumulative, total number of guests, clients, attendees, patrons, and participants for organizations’ services offered.
Borrowers: a cumulative, non-unique count of individuals using organizations’ rental programs.
Volunteer Numbers: this value is either the cumulative total of volunteers reported by organizations or, if the volunteer count is not provided but volunteer hours are, it is calculated by dividing the total hours by 30 and rounding up to the nearest whole number. For example, 20 hours would be shown as at least 1 volunteer, while 100 hours would be shown as 4 volunteers (100 ÷ 30 = 3.33, rounded up to 4).
Volunteer Hours: if organizations have this number, the RIC will add it cumulatively. If an organization leaves this blank but provides a total number of volunteers, the RIC will automatically multiply the total number of volunteers by 30 (the average number of hours per volunteer – a number that we obtained through field studies). Entering a number for the total volunteer hours will automatically override that default average of 30 hours.
Socio-Economic + Economic
Total Paid Volunteers: this is a cumulative number of volunteers receiving stipends, honoraria, etc.
Volunteer Value: this is determined by taking the total number of volunteer hours and multiplying by $41.82 (Washington’s average hourly rate as of May, 2025).
Paid Positions: this is a cumulative number of paid positions noted by organizations.
Total Retail Value: this is a cumulative sum of the retail values of the products kept in use utilizing the average retail values assigned each of the products.
Total Repair Costs: these are the cumulative costs including labor, parts/materials, and tools reported by entities such as professional repair shops.
Total Funding: this is a cumulative sum of funding reported by organizations. It includes funding sources like grants, donations, and program / event sponsorships.
Total Profits: this is a cumulative sum of profits provided by the organizations.
Total Membership Fees: this is a cumulative sum of fees organizations have reported receiving.
Avoided Disposal Costs: this is a cumulative total of costs calculated by taking the total tonnage of products reused and multiplying by the tipping fee for the county the organization operates in.