INSTITUT Veolia Environnement

Report n°2: An integrated approach to economic and social contestability in business

Restricting access to sources of supply using an intangible asset

The recycling operator can be confident that access to sources of supply is restricted. This restriction results from the need to develop and rely on an intangible asset to trade in goods of uncertain quality. In practice, due to the gap between the skills and knowledge of independent collectors and the recycler's technical and business skills , the volume actually collected to meet the recycler's demand differs in quality and quantity from the potential volume to collect from an area containing resources a priori accessible to various collection operators.