Design for circular economy must consider disruptive technologies

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/design-circular-economy-disruptive-technology 
This is an article that was first published by 
Chris Sherwin
theguardian.com, Tuesday 12 November 2013 13.57 GMT

Design for circular economy must consider disruptive technologies

While nuts and bolts are important, circular designs may not be created by engineers and designers, but by technologists, digital entrepreneurs and innovators

There are risks in getting designers to focus on the nuts and bolts of current products, rather than on disruptive technologies that can supersede them. Photograph: Alan Kaplanas/Corbis

A decade or so ago, I worked on green and sustainable product design. I spent much of that time dismantling products like video cassette recorders (VCR's) to reduce materials, improve their energy use, eliminate hazardous substance use and make them easier to disassemble.

A few years down the line and our focus had shifted to dismantling DVD players and recorders which had superseded VCR's. We used essentially the same processes to tackle similar design challenges like energy and material use, product disassembly and toxicity.

Fast-forward 10 years and what has happened is the dematerialisation of entertainment content through new digital and information technologies and business models like Netflix, LoveFilm and on-demand TV.

Beyond teardown

A lot of design for the circular economy is based on disassembly projects, generically termed as teardowns. You can learn a lot from taking an in-depth look at the mechanics and technicalities of how a product is put together. It can unquestionably help make portfolios more circular, easier to disassemble and recycle, more resource efficient and minimise its hazardous substances and environmental footprint – all valuable stuff.

However, do these tools and methods adequately prepare us for an ecologically and economically sustainable future? There are risks in getting designers to focus, quite literally, on the nuts and bolts of current products, rather than on the disruptive technologies that can supersede them. It may distract us from systemic product-system redesign, and circular economy designers need to track the seismic technological shifts that disrupt what we do today.

Keeping on top of what customers really want

In some ways, dismantling video cassette recorders and DVD players all those years ago is an early exemplar of the circular economy principle of 'starting with the end in mind' - feeding learning from end of life product disassembly into early-stage product design. But it's important to have the right end in mind. Ultimately, it was the 'result', function, utility, service or benefit that consumers were looking for to enjoy movie and TV content on-demand.

This is now satisfied in completely new ways, increasingly through digital technology or new services that render old solutions obsolete. The design question then becomes what is the best and greenest way to deliver against these needs. It will be important to ensure new technologies or solutions have sustainability maximised and built-in. Studies have suggested the switch from physical (CD's) to digital entertainment content (MP3's) can reduce environmental impacts by 40-80% (PDF). Downloading movies however can have a higher carbon footprint than posting DVD's, based on the efficiencies of servers and IT systems, so there is still a job to ensure dematerialised products and new solutions actually deliver waste savings and circularity across the entire system from the outset.

Circular designers need to develop functionality and service-based thinking, as well as knowing about products, technology and material science, and we should never lose sight that in the end, almost all products are designed for people and their needs.

A toolkit for circular design

Our toolkit for circular design will certainly need good mechanical design skills; plus will undoubtedly feature a better understanding of the fundamental chemistry that makes up product components, as advocated by many circular economy and cradle-to-cradle practitioners.

However, many winning circular designs may not be created on the tables or labs of engineers and designers dismantling existing kit; they may come from a new entrant, or a fleet of-foot technologists, digital entrepreneurs and innovators that gate-crash a category or industry; or else they may come from smart marketers who spot and understand their customers needs and deliver breakthrough solutions to satisfy them.

We need new circular models of commerce that design-out waste, material and resource problems from the get-go, in just the way digital and service innovation has revolutionised home entertainments. As a result, the circular economy will become the front-end design and innovation issue that it clearly merits. In the rush to get to grips with the end-of-life issues from current products, circular design must not miss new technology and new needs as fundamental drivers for innovation.