You're aiming for circularity in product design. How do you incorporate sustainable materials effectively?
To effectively integrate sustainable materials in product design, it's crucial to align with circular economy principles. These strategies can guide you:
- Select materials with a low environmental footprint, such as recycled or biodegradable options.
- Design for disassembly, ensuring that every part of the product can be easily separated for recycling or composting.
- Build relationships with suppliers who prioritize sustainability and can provide transparency about their sourcing.
How have you approached material selection to promote circularity in your designs?
You're aiming for circularity in product design. How do you incorporate sustainable materials effectively?
To effectively integrate sustainable materials in product design, it's crucial to align with circular economy principles. These strategies can guide you:
- Select materials with a low environmental footprint, such as recycled or biodegradable options.
- Design for disassembly, ensuring that every part of the product can be easily separated for recycling or composting.
- Build relationships with suppliers who prioritize sustainability and can provide transparency about their sourcing.
How have you approached material selection to promote circularity in your designs?
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Sustainability is a journey, and we are still at the start. A solid Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and an ecologist by profession, not just by interest, should be part of every company meeting focused on creating sustainable, profitable products without risking greenwashing. For example, a startup that repurposes waste into new products, to reduce the use of trees, can be beneficial. However, many startups collect plastic and create products that rubb off micro- or nano-plastics, with unknown impacts. Following ecological principles, companies should apply the precautionary approach and use materials that fit into natural cycles. Yes you must make compromises than eventually.
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Have you asked yourself first if there is something wrong with the materials you are currently using? Once you have established wether the materials you are using fit within circularity principles, the second step is to select new materials that can be sitable candidates. And it is not obvious to do so. To incorporate sustainable materials effectively, you need to evaluate their entire lifecycle, from sourcing to disposal. Begin by assessing the environmental impact, durability and recyclability of potential materials. Collaboration with suppliers is key. If you can't establish a healthy partnership, you won't have your materials.
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Focusing on the process to establish the 'Reverse Logistics' for various materials to create a closed-loop supply chain is the guiding light when it comes to incorporating sustainable materials for product circularity. One needs to tick of the right boxes: 1. Is the material ecologically viable and renewable? 2. Can it be easily retrieved at various stages of a Product's lifecycle (repair, repurpose, remanufacture, recycle) 3. How complex is the process of recycling/composting & can it become feedstock instead of virgin materials? 4. Does it affect the quality, function & longevity of the product? 5. Is the material sourcing transparent & ethical Parallely compare the LCA of various materials claiming to be Sustainable for best choice
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In an ideal case, real circularity requires you to design the product that it can be recycled in an economically viable manner with the existing infrastructure in the intended market. Furthermore, the output of these recycling processes are of high enough quality so that they can be used to manufacture to original product. In practice, this often means a discussion on trade-offs and sacrifices you are willing to make in other design aspects: Using different inks or adhesives, changing colors (often a bit less vibrant and with a grey tint) convenience and marketing aspects, price etc. In the next step, you then have to think about how to mitigate the trade-offs you had to make to enable circularity.
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The selection of material should not be limited to initial cost but long term durability and purpose of usage assigned. While sustainability is a long term goal and short term benefit should only be considered if it helps the long term goal.
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