Circular Product Design: Addressing Critical Materials through Design

Abstract

For product designers, the world has traditionally been one of resource abundance. Introducing them to a resource-constrained world thus requires new design strategies. This chapter explores how embedding circular economy principles into design practice and education could help product designers take critical material problems into account. We introduce four product design strategies that address materials criticality: (1) avoiding and (2) minimizing the use of critical materials, (3) designing products for prolonged use and reuse, and (4) designing products for recycling. The 'circular' strategies (3) and (4) are elaborated, as these sit most firmly within the remit of product design. This leads to a typology of circular product design that redefines product and material lifetime in terms of obsolescence, and introduces a range of approaches to resist, postpone or reverse product and material obsolescence. The typology establishes the basis for the field of circular product design, bringing together design approaches that were until this date unconnected and paving the way for the development of detailed design methods.

Drivers and barriers to circular economy implementation

“…In the literature, many other barriers were discussed and categorized including barriers related to market covering: “lack of design tools for circular business models and for circular products” (Bakker et al , 2014) and “current infrastructure does not support circular offerings, i.e., locked-in infrastructure” (Mont et al , 2017); barriers related to value chain covering: “existing supply chain dependencies and relationships prevent circularity” (Boons and Lüdeke-Freund, 2013), “OEMs may risk damaging relationships with their retailers and dealers by offering repair or refurbishment” (Prendeville and Bocken, 2016) and “component producers and other non-OEMs may have limited or unclear opportunities to adopt circular business models because of their position in the value chain” (Mont et al , 2006); barriers related to finance, coercive, customer related, organizational strategies and capabilities, and technical issues are listed (Mont et al , 2017). In addition to that Van Eijk (2015) categorized barriers in terms of lever which are “general framework,” “design and production,” “consumption,” “recycling and recovery,” and “logistics.”…”

Integrating circular economy strategies and business models: a systematic literature review

“…Value capture elements might be designed to profit from new revenue streams, cost savings or non-monetary benefits connected with circular efficiency strategies and value preservation. Additional revenue streams can be generated by capitalizing on secondary manufacturing markets and extracting value from redistributing, repairing and reselling post-consumer products (Bakker et al , 2014). Profitability may also be derived through revenue streams, such as selling a long-life product at a premium price, adopting a PSS and selling access to a product or providing maintenance services (Moreno et al , 2016).…”

A terminology for downcycling

“…In the context of recycling, circular economy, or material and product cycles in general, sometimes the term “downcycling” or “downcycled” appears (Di Maria et al., 2018; Glogic et al., 2021; Ihnát et al., 2020; Koffler & Florin, 2013; Ortego et al., 2018a; Zhang et al., 2020). The term “downgrading” or “downgraded” is used similarly (Bakker et al., 2019; Worrell et al., 2016). Very broadly, the term downcycling is used to describe aspects of imperfections in the material and product cycles beyond thermodynamically unavoidable losses.…”

“…is taken byBachmann et al (2018),Bakker et al (2019),Corona et al (2019), Geyer et al (2016a), 2016b, Deckert (2016, European Commission (2013),Gala et al (2015),Gößling (2001),Haas et al (2015),Huysman et al (2015),Horodytska et al (2020),Koffler and Florin (2013),Kristof and Hennicke (2010),Mohajan (2020),Ortego et al (2018a),Orzol and Lieberwirth (2018),Risse et al (2019), Sanchis-Sebastiá et al (2021), Tanguay et al (2021), and Worrell et al (2016.…”