This is a question that many people in the design industry and the increasingly climate-conscious consumers are asking themselves. What is Circular Design? As a quick resume, Circular Design is an approach to design products and services for the circular economy.
In a circular economy (CE), the economic and environmental value of materials is preserved for as long as possible by keeping them in the economic system, either by lengthening the life of the products formed from them or by looping them back in the system to be reused. The notion of waste no longer exists in a CE, because products and materials are, in principle, reused and cycled indefinitely.
Design in the circular economy is complex and requires a transformation in thinking, to shift ‘from the current product-centric focus towards a more system-based design approach’. Circular Design searches for a way to deliver a product or a service, which is functional and made of optimum materials to deliver the best performance while minimizing its negative impact along the whole life cycle.
Circular design challenges a generation of products and materials in a way that minimizes the primary raw materials use. As the name implies, the focus of circular design is on curtailing a value loss embedded in these products and materials, by keeping them circulating in closed loops. These loops, such as reuse, repair, remanufacture, refurbishment or recycling, extend the product’s life cycle and improve the resource productivity.
The key lies in how a product or a material is designed and how different aspects and requirements are balanced. The design phase influences the product’s life and the ease of its reprocessing. Designers have the opportunity to consider durability, compatibility, modularity or multi-tasking functions of designed products.
The Inertia Principle
For product designers, the Inertia Principle is about product integrity, which we define here as the extent to which a product remains identical to its original (e.g., as manufactured) state, over time. The starting point is the original product, and the intention of the Inertia Principle is to keep the product in this state, or in a state as close as possible to the original product, for as long as possible.
“Do not repair what is not broken, do not remanufacture something that can be repaired, do not recycle a product that can be remanufactured”.
From the above insights, it follows that products can have one or more use cycles, but only one lifetime. As long as a product’s obsolescence can be reversed, a new use cycle can be started.
Strategies for Circular Product Design
Designers can help prevent a product from becoming obsolete by creating products with a high physical and emotional durability, that are intended to be used for a long time. In other words, such products resist obsolescence. An example could be a comfortable, sturdy pair of leather boots. Designers can also create products that are easy to maintain and/or upgrade, thus enabling extended use.
The four design models for a circular economy:
1. Design for Longevity promotes long life and reliable products that can be easily dismantled for upgrade or repair by the user.
2. Design for Service changes the product ownership into a product as a service business model.
3. Design for Re-use in Manufacture aims at the return of old products or their components back to manufacturers for an upgrade on faulty or obsolete parts replacement, to be subsequently resold.
4. Design for Material Recovery recaptures materials and products to be reprocessed and recycled into new materials.
Especially in the design phase, the active communication between designers, material experts and engineers, environmentalists and economists, and end users is essential for an innovative circular design decisions.
The success of the circular design or circular economy in general, depends on transforming the whole system and redesigning our thinking and ultimately, the collecting and return systems. The shift towards a circular economy is associated with a change in our attitudes, mindsets, perceptions and behaviour.
At Round Corner, we believe that Circular Design is one of the best solutions to achieve carbon neutrality and the climate goals the humanity is trying to follow. That’s why we are focused on designing our first product for the circular economy.
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