Products as services and Circular ReDesign

- Imagine if the things you owned were created with their full life already planned. And as a result, you'd never need to throw anything away or figure out what to do with things at their end of life. This is exactly what products as services helps us do. One key way of circularizing the economy is by creating subscription models that enable us to get what we need without all the waste and hassle of recycling. Instead, we just send these items back to be repaired or reused so they can be redeployed in the economy. Now, in the last two videos, I explained different ways we can design sustainable products that fit within circular business models. But I didn't tell you one of the most effective ways to do this. That's by creating products that are also services that fit within a well designed system. In Germany, they've had a reuse system for beverage packaging for years. Glass bottles are designed to be rewashed and refilled after use. So there's a small fee that people pay when they're purchasing the beverage, but they get it back when they return it. The deposit is also available on plastic bottles which are inserted into a machine at a supermarket and a refund is issued which they can then spend on purchasing new things. The plastic is not actually directly reused but because it's all the same type and it's collected in this clean way, it's super easy to recycle. These types of reuse and recapturing systems work really well when there's a clear incentive and the system's set up to make it work. It's being applied to all sorts of other use cases as well. There's even a service you can get for your home called Loop, which delivers groceries in reusable containers that are returned after you've finished the product so that they can be rewashed and sent out again. There's even some cases like this for coffee cups and takeout as well. Now let's explore how this could apply to your industry by doing a circular redesign ideation session. Use the exercise files provided to explore how you could turn a linear product into a circular solution and what types of incentives would help make it efficient and desirable for your customers? Ask yourself, how can we take our products back and cycle them through as new offerings? Is there a way we can provide a buyback program or connect customers to other customers to sell unneeded items? Think about how you can deliver the value your product or service offers, but in a completely different way. Redesigning for the circular economy is about delivering value to customers and the economy in entirely new ways. How can your product be designed to be resold or reused? Can you manage its life in a completely different way? Are there waste products in your production process that can be the raw material for another system? Can you create a service model around your product that eliminates the need for new products to be made? One of the main approaches to the circular economy and reducing waste in general, is for the producing company to take ownership of the product across its entire life, by selling it as a service instead of just that linear product. This solution can be applied to many different product categories, but lends itself well to consumables that run out or are used up very quickly. It's also an important way of getting rid of single use plastics out of our marketplace because we can replace convenience packaging with well designed reusables. To move from a linear to a circular model, you need to change the way you see what you do. So start by asking yourself some of these important questions. How can you design your products so that they are recaptured and reused at the end of their life? How can you transform your business model into a service instead of just a linear product? What systems do you need to invest in to help enable a circular business model? For example, if you're a disposable packaging company, you need to recapture and rewash things so you need facilities that enable that to happen. All products need to be designed with its future in mind right from the start. This is about creating better, more durable and useful products that don't create waste. There are so many strategies you can apply to both the product design and your business model. So now's the chance for you to explore how you could do this in your industry.