Design is a critical stage in any product lifecycle, especially in terms of end of life and sustainability, as 80% of the environmental impacts of the product will be decided during this stage.

The first step in the process of design is the brief generation. A brief focuses on the desired results of the design, and contains the problem statement (what is the problem we want to solve), the goals of the product (aims + objectives) and any constraints (budget, time, etc.)
Normally briefs contain one line, if anything, which describes the sustainability requirements of the product: “The product should be more environmentally friendly than the previous model” for instance. This is unless there is a law which obliges the company to act more thoroughly, for example the End of Life Vehicles (ELV) act in the automotive sector. In our case, the whole project will revolve around circularity, so our aims and objectives for the product will be based on the Four Design Models.

The Great Recovery’s Four Design Models diagram is a practical tool for re-thinking and re-designing products and services for a more circular economy:

• Design for longevity

This is the way we used to design things: for long life and fixability. Products can be easily taken apart for upgrade or repair, and are well crafted and reliable. Users place high levels of trust in these products and are emotionally attached to them, increasing the likelihood that they value them for a long time and then pass them on to another owner rather than throwing them away.

• Design for leasing or service

The product-sharing business model is becoming more common as leasing is seen as an alternative to ownership. It allows for higher specifications of design and materials that increase life and durability. The material stays in the ownership of the manufacturer as the product is never sold, so value is kept within the system.

• Design for re-use in manufacture

These business models and systems support the return of old products to manufacturers so that they can upgrade or replace components, fix and resell them. Reverse supply chains and effective legislation are important factors in remanufacturing. These products need to be designed for easy factory disassembly in order to increase their material utilisation.

• Design for material recovery

Products in this outer loop can be reprocessed – recycled – into new materials. These procedures can involve intensive recovery methods that extract the most value currently available. Design for fast-flowing product streams such as packaging must work effectively with the recovery industry to increase the value of material recovered and to reduce contamination and multi-material complexity.

Some of the things we considered for the brief were: local manufacture, long life in-use, recycled and recyclable materials, and eliminating waste.

We then had to choose what product we would redesign (or design from scratch, as a simple redesign would not be enough). There are millions of options and examples of bad product design, so it was a hard choice. We wanted something that just had one function (for example, cleaning teeth), a low value/ high volume product, and that had quite a short life – meaning it would end up in landfill soon after it’s manufactured. We wanted to rethink and redesign a product which typically has a linear lifecycle, and which people don’t give a second thought to before throwing away.

Design for a linear system is the most common method of product design, although it is changing little by little as sustainability becomes more important in the design world, and is being taught in universities and some schools. In our case, we wanted to design the product to go against this common methodology,
and follow a more circular pattern.

There are different strategies to design different products, and there is no one-way of designing a product for circularity, as demonstrated by the 4 Design Models diagram. In this project we will try and follow each of the paths to create different solutions or concepts for each, which could then be combined to make one or more final products.

Our project will revolve around disposable razors, to design a solution which won’t go into landfill at the end of its life. A full explanation of this choice will be shown in the next post in the series.

Even during this really early stage of the process we’ve already found some problems:

• People have different opinions on what sustainability is – is it circularity? Cradle to cradle? Energy use?
• Making a product sustainable is too broad, the brief has to be narrowed down so it can be carried out – you can’t work on solving every problem at once (further iterations could concentrate on improving other problem areas)

This project is a collaboration between the Great Recovery Programme and Fab Lab London.

At the London Wearables Show in March Apple finally unveiled their latest masterpiece – their Apple watch. It seems “wearable technology” is the coolest kid around. Numerous companies are developing or selling their own wearable gadget; normally it’s just a wristband that tracks your health, or a smartwatch which tries to jump on the bandwagon that Apple has just created. Even though all these products are useful, for now most of them are likely to be quirky gadgets bought by early technology adopters and then forgotten on a bedside table after six months.

Wearable technology is an interesting advancement, and the “internet of things” is quickly becoming a reality; but do we have the capability to dispose of more and more electronics? We are already starting to run short of some of the raw materials needed to make electronics. What will happen when everything, from your toaster to your watch to your fridge, contains even more complex electronics so they can all talk to each other – so when you wake up, your coffee is already prepared because your watch has told the coffee maker you’re awake, and this then prepares you fresh coffee without you having to move a finger!

The danger of this wave of wearables is that they are the vanguard of a new technology: soon there will be another wave of more advanced products which will be far more interesting – think back to how smartphones started; and the designers and companies who make these wearables know they will be discarded as soon as the next wave takes over. So why do we not think about what will happen to the first lot when this happens? Why do we not design a suitable end of life for products so that materials and electronics can be recovered and reused?

And where will all these discarded wearables go? Most likely, incineration or landfill. This is because considerations of circularity are still not one of the priorities when designing a product; they are not evident in most client briefs. If more designers thought about making products suitable for a circular economy, the materials and electronics of the first wave of products could in theory be used to feed the second or third wave of products.

My biggest disappointment after attending the wearables expo in London was that it seemed most companies weren’t thinking about the environmental or end of life impacts of their products. Products were brilliantly designed in terms of aesthetics and size, but horribly thought about in terms of sustainability. My favourite product in the expo was designed in such way that it was impossible to get into, and therefore very difficult to repair. Even though the team updates the product often, in order to extend its life; they told me that the product couldn’t be used for too long or reused by someone else as the material that is touching the skin constantly gets contaminated by sweat.

It’s a hard task, but sometimes the designer has to think more deeply about the system behind a product, especially in the case of start-ups which are creating iterative products which are likely to be quickly bought and thrown away.

If we dream of a future of interconnected and “intelligent” products, then we would do well to remember our intrinsic connections to our environment, and the far-reaching consequences of wearable, “disposable” technology.

Last Friday we hosted our second Fab Friday event at Fab Lab London. Excitingly, our participants represented a vibrant cross-section of the Circular Network: from plumbers to architects, university lecturers to graphic designers, biomimicry students to social justice entrepreneurs.

With so much cross-sectional expertise in one room, we wanted to ensure that our visitors benefited from mutual insights and discussion as much as they did from an introduction to the RSA Great Recovery, Fab Lab London and the circular economy. Using pink and yellow post-it notes, a blank wall, and Andrea’s Affinity Diagram model, we soon built up a virtual picture of the shared skills and interests in the room. One man thought that plumbing wasn’t very relevant to a circular economy, but it soon emerged that he had incredible knowledge of the interrelated systems within a building (rather like the materials systems on our planet, then!) – not to mention the practical skills that are eminently transferable in a Fab Lab context. Another lady, who had been a textiles designer for many years, announced that she had never considered where her materials came from before – let alone what happened to them after use – and started to come up with new ideas and questions.

Into the midst of this thrown-together network, Fab Lab’s Andrea Coens introduced some practical and simple ways in which she had used Fab Lab’s facilities to extend the life of some of her things – tying in perfectly with The Great Recovery’s inner-loop design model around longevity.

There was a camera tripod, which we decided was made from steel, aluminium, plastic, rubber and brass, probably imported from or via Taiwan, China, Australia, Iceland and the Middle East, and which had a broken part in the neck. Several other people in the room owned tripods – many of which hadn’t been used for upwards of ten or even twenty years – and when we talked about what would usually happen to these in the event of a broken part, responses ranged from ‘charity shop’ or ‘husband for repair’ to local dump, dustbin and ‘no idea’! In Andrea’s case, she had used a micrometer to measure the broken part precisely, had designed a new part using CAD software – actually improving the original design in the process by lengthening the threaded section to give it more strength – and then had 3D printed it at the Fab Lab.

Not only that, but she had then uploaded her new design to the website Thingiverse, an open source Creative Commons repository of designs for 3D printing, making it free for all to use and share. Within a couple of weeks, 16 other people had downloaded her design!

Andrea also showed us her ‘Fitbit’, a device for measuring steps and calories – fitness – and which had a small design fault in its attachment. Using Thingiverse again, Andrea had downloaded a ready-made design, printed it out in around 15 minutes, and instantly solved a problem which, though small, could have led to the product itself being wasted prematurely.

By the end of the afternoon, our participants had been introduced to the work of the Great Recovery, seen for themselves the potential of the Fab Lab (3D printing is merely one out of a myriad of tools and machines), and shared their own stories, ideas and challenges (not to mention business cards and email addresses.) One of them even got stuck straight in with a soldering job!

We are delighted to say that everyone had a fabulous and informative time – and we look forward to seeing even more of you next time!

Todd Harrison, London-based  freelance designer, discusses the rise of 3D printing and its potential contribution to a circular economy

Many of us live in a throwaway culture of convenience, strongly influenced by the consumption of short-lived items. There’s a disconnection between users and the products they use. Users often have no idea how their things are put together or made; they’re sealed up, with their inner workings hidden from view.

This may in part be because companies and manufacturers are often far from the users, both geographically and in spirit. It may too be because of high Intellectual Protection ratings for certain products, or for safety reasons in others.

Accessibility of 3D printing

However, if we can bring users closer to the factory, an object may become more valuable to them and, as well as increasing the users’ knowledge about the objects they use, may develop further self-reliance.

3D printers could enable this, and are expected to become as popular in the home in the next decade as traditional printers are today. 3D printing has come a long way from only four or five years ago when it was known as rapid prototyping. The technology is now being developed for a whole raft a materials and industries, even being employed print human organs.

This technology is already being brought closer to users with the emergence of 3D printing hubs that are springing up in cities around the world. Whilst these are predominantly being used for prototyping, it is a sign of things to come in terms of accessibility to manufacture.

Distributed manufacturing

3D printing can drastically reduce the complex network needed for the production of products and their many components, and therefore allow users more control over the production of the items they use.

A spanner was recently emailed to the International Space Station so it could be printed – something that would otherwise have been very expensive and energy consuming to receive.

In a similar way, platforms such as Open Desk: a service that allows designers to upload designs such as that of a table or chair, allows users that may be on the other side of the world to source a local manufacturer to make it instead – allowing designs to cover most of their journey digitally rather than in physical form, and bringing users closer to the factory.

Aiding repair and design for a circular economy

Creating products that can easily be disassembled for repair or separating into their separate components for recycling is important for closed loop design. Can we use technology like 3D printers to allow for a shift towards a culture of repair? Allowing us to rattle off a new kettle element if we need one, and save us accepting a kettle as broken and sending off to landfill – an all too common end for such a product and its valuable materials.

Social platform Fixperts is a social platform that connects designers with people in need of something fixing. The aim is to produce a quick, low-cost solution to prevent the object being seen as broken and being discarded. Platforms like Fixperts are encouraging a culture of repair, and with materials such as Sugru now available, repairing and maintaining are becoming easier; whether that be rejoining a snapped component, or reinforcing the component to prevent it snapping in the first place.

3D printers are a new tool for a culture of repair, and can bring users into the factory, encouraging conscious consumption and heighten users connections with their products. And, if used responsibly, reduce the processes required within the circular economy.

On 16th February at Fab Lab London we brought together experts in the fields of electronics and textiles to delve deeper into the the opportunities and challenges for traceability and tracking in these material categories.

Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFIDs) in electronics

Alan Dukinfield, from S2S Lifecycle Solutions, and Richard Sharpe, a Research Student at Loughborough University discussed the current and potential use of RFIDs for tracking electronics.

RFIDs are tags with a read and write capability, the data stored on them can be changed, updated and locked, enabling information to be held together with a product along throughout its life.

Richard Sharpe explained the utility of RFIDs for tracking products through the manufacturing and installation phases: enabling real time monitoring of data and ensuring accurate traceability. Popular in industries manufacturing highly specified products requiring exceptional quality (military and aviation products, for example), RFIDs are able to track both processes and conditions, such as temperature and handling methods, and this data enables manufacturers to identify, predict and reduce defects.

Whilst currently used in certain areas of production, Richard advocated the use of RFIDs as a way of capturing and passing on information throughout a product’s life. Information could then be added or collected by manufacturer(s), distributers, retailers, through the consumer use phase, to preparation for reuse (at places such as S2S) and finally to end of life (EOL), recycling etc.

Alan Dukinfield is Director of S2S Lifecycle Solutions, an asset recovery specialist for the electronics and electrical equipment sector with a zero to landfill policy. S2S sorts and prepares used electrical products, often from businesses, them for reuse or recycling. S2S processes e-waste to PAS 141 standard.

The PAS 141 specification has been developed by British Standards Institution to increase re-use of electrical and electronic equipment and to ensure that they are tested and repaired to a minimum level.

Unique tracking of each product is a mandatory part of this process and whilst most companies use barcodes, S2S have developed a unique system using RFID tagging to ensure traceability for each product that comes through their system.

When a product enters S2S it is tagged with an RFID, and this remains throughout it’s time on site. This tracking enables collection of data for the PAS 141 standard, and also helps with process improvements and workflow developments. Ultimately, the RFID tagging allows S2S to have clear traceability for their clients and be secure in the knowledge that they have sold on quality products, not destined for landfill in developing countries.

Both Alan and Richard predict more widespread utilisation of RFIDs across electronics and other product types. Collaboration and discussion between parties along a product supply chain will be required in order to capture the most useful information.

Returnity 100% recyclable polyester

We were joined via weblink by Rien Otto from Dutch aWEARness, a textile company creating fashion and workwear garments using Returnity®, a polyester material a suitable for a closed loop production chain. Worn out garments are collected, shredded, spun and woven into new materials and garments without any loss of quality.Dutch aWEARness maintain the ownership of the materials, with customers paying for the use and performance of the clothing; an excellent example of new business models facilitating material capture and return. ]

Dutch aWEARness oversees every stage, logging progress via a web-based ‘track and trace’ system and quickly addressing any issues. Within the system, raw materials and products all have unique barcodes, ensuring accurate traceability. A Circular Content Management System (CCMS) has been developed to capture the information about materials and processes from all partners in the supply chain.

Fashion Futures

Dr Kate Goldsworthy is Senior Research Fellow in Textiles Environment Design (TED) at Chelsea and a lead researcher with the University’s Textile Futures Research Centre (TFRC). Her work focuses on design for cyclability and on innovation finishes and production techniques.

Giving an overview of the work of TED and TFRC Kate gave an insight into the challenges facing textile traceability, and emphasised the need for better education and understanding of consumer behaviour, as this is key to creating closed loop systems.

DeNAture – Design possibilities in regenerated cullulose materials

Mirium Ribul presented her recent investigations into a physical coding system for a faster and more accurate identification of invisible materials information in a closed loop chemical recycling system. A challenge in closed loop and recycled textile processes is identification of the materials themselves, something which Miriam noticed first hand when working in the lab with Dr Hanna de la Motte during her time as a designer in residence at Chalmers University of Technology and SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden. Labelling garments and textiles does not give enough information, and can easily be lost or damaged. Miriam recognised the need for faster and more accurate identification of materials at the recycling stage. By applying design thinking in a technical laboratory environment Miriam developed ‘DeNature’, a project that recommends embedding material information in fibres without disrupting their properties.

Miriam is continuing this work as her PhD project at TRFC.

Distributed manufacturing

The event was topped and tailed with presentations from Tomas Diez, of Fab Lab Barcelona, who specialises in urbanism and digital technologies.Tomas challenged us to think about the impact of technology on the physical world around us, and the dialogue between the space we use and technology we have. The advent of cars, for example, radically influenced the layout of cities and the way we shop, as the printing press radically altered our ways of sharing information.

He posed interesting questions about what the cities of the future might look like as digital technologies, such as 3D printing, take off: Will we shop for materials on our high streets? How will the future citizen engage with waste?

Technological developments have gone hand in hand with globalisation, particularly in the manufacturing of goods. We live in a world of complex, often global supply and waste chains, invisible to many. This is not an easy place for anyone to trace materials. But this connected world, the internet and new digital technologies does provide opportunities for a change in our system of production and manufacture.

Tomas moved on to talk about his work with Smart Citizen sensors, bringing the ability to track, measure and monitor into the hands of many. A global network of these hand held sensors is helping people to collect data about their environment, building evidence and potential for truly smart cities. Attendees were able to try out these sensors to begin to see their potential. This project demonstrates the potential for decentralised information gathering and analysis; tracking and tracing led by and enabling citizens to design and manufacture in a decentralised system.

Who needs Mikimoto, Tiffany or Cartier when you have acrylic off-cuts and some e-waste to make jewelry out of? Our film shows off some of the stunning designs which were created during our bustling maker session at Fab Lab London.

(http://fablablondon.org) which aimed to ignite and excite the public interest in making, and raise the profile of Make Spaces.
The RSA’s Great Recovery Project is challenges you to get crafty with waste!
Last year alone, over 50 million tonnes of electronic waste was generated worldwide, and over 1 million tonnes of textiles and clothes are thrown away each year in the UK alone. We think that we can do more to re-use, re-purpose and up-cycle our previously unloved ‘stuff’.

Film: Paul Wyatt (http://www.paulwyatt.co.uk)
Music: “I Saw Three Ships” by Ben DeVries

We used e-waste and acrylic off cuts from jewellery designers Finchittida Finch to make new pieces of jewellery. Some even had a practical element like the ‘stress relieving pendant’ which used the mechanism from a cd drive on a necklace which you could click. ThoseWorks  also came along to demo the Woodpecker, an Arduino powered wall plotter.

We were delighted to have such a big and diverse group of individuals join us for a really creative and inspirational day!

Fab Lab London will provide a new centre for makers, entrepreneurs and others right in the heart of the City of London. The collaboration with The Great Recovery means that members will be encouraged to question the purpose and life cycle of the products they make, as well as having lots of fun bringing their concepts to life with 3D printers and laser cutters!

Pop in and visit us!

Every Friday between 10am and 4pm The Great Recovery’s new home at FabLab London will be open for anyone to drop in and visit. If you’d like to know more about the circular economy and our activities, tell us about your latest projects, check out the FabLab as a venue for your next event or just come for a coffee and a chat and a play on the machines, you’d be more than welcome! Sign up here to let us know you’re coming.

What’s Fab Lab London about?
Fab Lab is a global movement of over 300 labs,  emerging from the MIT Bits & Atoms Lab in 2001. Fab Lab London has just opened and is now operating in the heart of the City of London, based between the Bank of England and St Pauls.

In essence we are a rapid prototyping and digital fabrication creative workshop for computing, electronics and design. This is complemented with very latest small scale fabrication equipment, including CNC milling, laser cutting and 3D printing. It is the perfect combination of hardware and software.

In Fab Lab London most days you will find a mixture of students, designers, engineers and early stage growth companies who are learning and building products.

How did it come to be here?
Fab Lab London has been set up by Ande Gregson and Tony Fish, both of whom have had very successful businesses and careers and see this as part of giving back to the same community.

In reality Fab Lab London came about because of support from a dedicated collective of designers, technologists, social entrepreneurs and passionate individuals. The team helped source the location, find equipment, build the environment, create a launch event, draw up agreements and identify technology partners. This is what makes FabLab London a unique community initiative.

What were you up to before?
Ande has a creative industries, media and technology background which is rounded with business skills and a ‘lets just do it’ approach to projects. Tony has an electronics and engineering background, has built and sold a number of businesses and acts as an early stage investor. In many ways the next phase of product development, which is where Fab Lab is focussed, is a combination of design, electronics, computing, business and funding.

What are you trying to do here?
Our motivation for building and running the lab is to provide individuals and early stage growth businesses with a place to build and test ideas as they start their journey. For designers we can help visualise products for clients and for students we provide access to the very best new ideas and tools as part of their education.

We open the lab to a school once a week and run a day-long class to enable the students to build a variety of projects involving design skills, electronics, computing, science, art and digital fabrication.  There is an open access day every Friday to give members of the public access to events, education workshops and a taster of what’s possible with digital fabrication. The rest of the time it is open for our members.

If you would like to visit The Great Recovery’s new home at Fab Lab and see what’s in it for you, sign up here and come along one Friday or contact ande@fablablondon.org

Designing for disassembly is one way to ensure your products are becoming more circular. As a designer working towards a circular economy, disassembly means your raw materials can then be used for other products. In textile design, often fabrics are decorated with techniques such as silk screen printing. But what happens if you use prints on a textile? You leave behind a material on the fabric that most of the time cannot be removed, biodegraded or recycled.

In this blog article I am going to introduce you to different techniques that can be used to design decorated textiles in a way which makes it possible to disassemble the materials and biodegrade, reuse or recycle them.

Laser cutting and etching
Using a laser you create different effects on a textile. When cutting patterns you can create a design where by different layers are visible through each other. It’s also possible to make stiff fabrics more flexible when you cut different line designs in the textile. If you use laser etching (not cutting all the way through, more like ‘scratching the surface’) you are able to create grey scale prints. The effect works very well with fleece and velvet fabrics. Also interesting results can be made with flexible bio plastic materials.

Laser Cutting

Laser Etching

Memory melting
Synthetic materials have an interesting property: when they are heated they melt and when they cool down they remember their new form. This can be used to decorate synthetic textiles by creating folds in many different ways.

Wear2 ecostitching technology
This is a dissolvable yarn. You can stitch with it like any other yarn on normal industrial machines. When exposed to microwave radiation the yarn loses about 80% of its tensile strength. The textiles stay unharmed, and after the treatment pulling lightly on the seams causes the yarn to break, which then allows components to be easily separated.

Punching
With punching you attach two materials to each other using needles with barbs. Your fibre and textile choice is very important with this technique in order to make it suitable for eco-effective designing. If you use a woolen fibre, also use a woolen textile as a base layer. In this way the woolen textile is still biodegradable (if it is dyed with biodegradable dyes) or recyclable. When using a synthetic fibre punching is possible but it becomes more difficult because these fibres are very smooth.

Punching

Removable prints
Inks are currently developed to be permanently fixed and last as long as possible. But this is not in line with designing for a circular economy. If you want to design for disassembly and reuse it would be better if you were able to remove the ink from the fabric at the end of its life. Refinity has developed removable ink and is currently seeking for partners to improve the ink and make it available on the market.

Removable Ink

3D printing
With 3D printing you can create textile-like materials from biodegradable plastics or recyclable plastics. There are currently flexible materials that can be printed in 3D. For example TPU 92A-1, which is used by Iris van Herpen and developed by Materialise to create a dress.
Liz Havlin is working on an open source project that turns recycled plastic into 3D printer ink. The extruder she is creating is called the Legacy and designed by inventor Hugh Lyman.

Challenges and opportunities
As you can see there are a lot of new possibilities and old techniques in a new form that can be used to design textile products for effective disassembly. But I can imagine there are also some challenges that keep you from doing so. Please tell me in the comments below what you think is needed to make designing for a circular economy a success.

I hope these techniques inspired you and you cannot wait to start implementing eco-effective designing in your company working towards a circular economy! If you would like to know more, go to www.refinity.eu