Reposted, with thanks, from The Ecospot Blog.

Quite often, it is the things that go unnoticed that have the biggest impact. Take fire labels for instance. They are a small part of a chair, or sofa, yet without these little pieces of legislative fabric, the whole piece of furniture cannot be reused. And even though they do seem small, they are often cut off as they flap about under cushions – and many of us do not realise that this then consigns our furniture to landfill at the end of its life. Understanding these challenges, both small and large, is the baton that The Great Recovery has taken up in their ‘Rearranging the Furniture’ Design Residency in collaboration with SUEZ.

And to celebrate the end of the project, The Great Recovery held a day as part of the London Design Festival, with a roundtable discussion from the experts, designers and practitioners who took part and some practical demonstrations of upholstery.

Traditional techniques

Patrizia Sottile and Andrea Simonutti – of Urban Upholstery are no strangers to reuse, as their pieces use rescued frames which are brought back to life with traditional methods, and the first part of the session was dedicated to a demonstration of how to refurbish a sprung chair, which itself had been recovered for a new life.

Springs were connected with string, meshed together in a pattern that will be both strong and flexible, then covered with hessian, stitched, then covered again with coconut fibres. This is a craft – hand created and little altered in centuries. And, as the Urban Upholsterers explained, allows a piece to be reused, recovered, refurbished and repaired – unlike the cheap and mass produced pieces that we can pick up from chain furniture stores. Cheap construction means that long life, recovery and reuse is often impossible.

We also got to see the ‘Survivor Sofa’ from the ‘Rearranging the Furniture’ project up close – and as well as the beautiful exposed frame, the fabric was something to behold

Created by British fabric manufacturer, Camira, in collaboration with The Great Recovery, the ‘Survivor’ fabric was developed to use as much pre-consumer fabric waste as possible. The new weave is created with 30% recycled wool fibre – recovered, shredded and woven into a new, tweed like fabric. The fibres are from offcuts of Camira fabrics, collected from contractors who use their upholstery range.

And whilst 30% recycled yarn does not sound like a lot, it is actually quite groundbreaking. Each time a fabric is recycled, the yarn shortens, making it increasingly difficult to use in a new fabric – it literally is not strong enough. However, if it is mixed with some virgin wool yarns, a natural recycled fabric is possible. The Survivor fabric is just that – and will hopefully soon be available to specifiers.

On the day, we were able to use the beautiful fabric to create our own cushions, in any variety of the three colourways – blue, red, or violet. Plumping (excuse the pun) for blue and red, each of our cushions was stuffed with recycled (post-consumer) yarn and finished with more traditional skills – we each learnt the ‘invisible stitch’, allowing us to close our cushions with no stitching visible.

Working together

The day concluded with a round table discussion between many of the experts involved in the bulky waste design residency. Representatives came from across The Great Recovery’s network, including Surrey County Council, Suez, Global Action Plan, Camira, London Re-use Network and Surrey Re-use Network, as well as the designers involved in the residency.

Discussion centered on the need to make the services and systems that facilitate furniture reuse as efficient and user friendly as possible. Because, along with considered design of products, achieving this is key to helping connect individuals and organisations with furniture no longer required with those individuals and organisations seeking it.

Behaviour change – from something as simple as not removing a fire label, through to rethinking the timeframes involved in passing on furniture – was seen by many of the panel members as a key part of their own work. Language and the way we talk about ‘waste’ and ‘reuse’ was identified as having much potential to shift our perceptions and the value we place on items that are not brand new.

Data about reuse were raised as a current hurdle but potential opportunity for increasing reuse. May Al-Karooni from Globechain explained the challenges she and others had faced in finding data about reuse and its impact – data valued highly by investors – because unlike recycling, there are not the data available. Globechain are tackling this through the reporting they offer users of their reuse platform – enabling organisations to identify financial savings and social impact from offering furniture and fittings for reuse.

And my cushion? It got its first test on the train back to Brighton from London Bridge, as surprisingly, there were no free seats. Lucky I’d just made one.

Here Erica and Sharon reflect on the outcomes from the London event.

From June 12th-14th the Open Source Circular Economy Days took place at Fab Lab London. Participants from a variety of backgrounds were introduced to circular economy challenges identified by leaders such as RSA Great Recovery, Open Energy Monitor, The Rubbish Diet, and the Knowledge Transfer Network (also the London event sponsor), before setting about about working on solutions using open source principles.

Topics included a challenge set by RSA Great Recovery to explore and prototype ways to build circularity into maker spaces – such as Fab Labs and hackspaces (handy the event was held in one). This challenge links with a Future Makespaces project run by the Royal College of Art, so keep an eye out for more details on this challenge and project soon from one of the participants and researchers, Grit Hartung.

Another team opted to develop alternative bottle designs and closed loop recycling systems for high-end (and often unrecyclable) cosmetic industry products. The team went on to develop and prototype a simple reusable inner fixing using the 3D printer at their disposal. Note: it took 10 hours to print a small pot!

One team worked with Open Energy Monitor on its open source energy monitoring hardware, to build understanding of the embodied energy impact of a product. They were lucky enough to have one of the founders joining in the team, as well as drop-in support by an expert in LCA and an Open LCA user, who was able to provide great insight, direction and verify the quality of the open data set used. What is exciting about this is the potential for open guidance and transparent communication to enable others to use similar approaches to map other product designs and supply chains. You can read more about this challenge in Trystan’s write-up, as well as read more details on the embodied energy of a micro-controller. Open Energy Monitor has also been chosen as one of the projects for the upcoming POC 21 (Proof of Concept) innovation camp in Paris.

By the end of the Trust is not a Waste challenge the team had neatly summarised years of research, data, online educational resources and insight work from the likes of WRAP, Keep Britain Tidy and SITA UK, into a great wireframe, UX and UI Sketch for an app to build trust and clarity in the waste and recycling system.

The difficulties in designing wearable technology for a circular economy were also grappled with, with the participant that led this challenge becoming the resident expert. He explored current guidelines for sustainable or circular product designs and looked at ways to build these on for wearables. The team then envisaged future scenarios featuring repurposed smartwatches.

We had frustration, learning, hugs and beers and have ended no longer as organisers and participants but as collaborators, openly sharing our skills and passion for exploring, prototyping and creating action for an Open Source Circular Economy.

So, what is next? It is not set, but we know that it’s not just about the Days. It’s about catalyzing ideas, finding common ground, understanding and growing through open participation across sectors and disciplines. The OSCEdays is about putting ideas into action, learning, sharing and collaborating openly with like-minded people all over the world. We know we have a long way to go to fully identify and grow the opportunities and welcome and encourage others to explore with us.

Here Erica and Sharon reflect on some of the happenings from the events in 33 countries around the globe.

What happens when you open up an event and create a platform that enables people to not just take part but help to build that platform and event? To help shape its identify and populate its content with their own wonderful projects, ideas, knowledge and experience, and what’s more, to focus it on exploring open source principles for a Circular Economy.

Open Source: Whether in the context of software, data, hardware, innovation, education resources or standards, the underlying principles of open source indicate ways of freely accessing, using, modifying, collaborating and sharing.

After laying the basic foundations, overarching objectives and framework, this is exactly what the Open Source Circular Economy days (OSCEdays) set out to do. And from 11th-15th June grass roots and volunteer led, local organisers came together in 33 cities spanning 25 countries around the world to run challenge-based weekends.

In London the event, held at Fab Lab London, was pleased to be sponsored by the Knowledge Transfer Network and have a variety of great challenges set (including one from RSA Great Recovery).

Here’s a taster of some of the OSCE days’ activities that went on across the globe:

● Live, international Google hangouts. An example, organisers in Helsinki sharing their circular Monopoly board game with participants in India!

● A workshop at Philips Innovation Eindhoven to learn from experts in open source with the aim to openly ideate wearable technology solutions and tackle difficulties such as LEDs embedded in clothing

● A five-day festival of open source and circular economy in Berlin resulting in the development of a circular textile manual followed by a diverse industry panel discussion

● A group of 20 open source and environmental enthusiasts in a small village in France, engaging with locals, mapping local needs and building a bio digester

● An enthusiastic group of children in Bergen singing while creating artwork from recycled bottle tops

● A showcase of expert videos including Dr Conny Bakker, (TU Delft) on Gap Exploiters, Frank O’Connor compelling you to share more, David Li in Shanghai introducing concepts of ‘gongban’ and ‘guanzo’ and Kyle Wiens of iFixit setting an open design challenge for designers to build reparability into products and design for the longest possible lifespan

● Presentations and discussions organised and hosted by Gien from Stop Reset Go in Cape Town and Johannesburg, on topics from circular product design, remanufacturing, biomimicry and global perspectives to system economics…

The list goes on and no doubt more amazing activities, insights, practical action and steps taken will continue to be shared over the coming weeks and months.

It was diverse, exploratory, exhausting and completely uplifting!

Our open source experts used their knowledge and experience to create documentation guidelines, enabling open, collaborative development of the event and embedding open source principles in the solutions. There is a lot that industry and others can learn from this approach, particularly in terms of transparency, collaboration and alternative business models, to move the circular economy forward. It has also highlighted some barriers and possible conflicting priorities in some suggested Circular Economy strategies, particularly around product ownership.

The actions during the days will take a while to be reviewed but summary documentation of the activities and challenges are available and can be openly accessed. The OSCE Days teams are now looking at the next steps and will be continuing the spirit of co-development, collaboration, practical action and sharing progress in the coming months.

Service design can refine existing services so they work better within a system, but it can also suggest completely new services that reconfigure the system itself. For example, instead of designing a better way of accessing a kettle, we might design a better way to access boiled water. The skills of the service designer can also bring value to sectors such as fast-moving consumer goods, not an area you would immediately think of as part of a service, but which can take huge benefit from ‘design thinking’.

Sophie Thomas, Director of Circular Economy for the RSA looks back at the innovative Great Recovery stand at the Resource 2015 event in March 2015 which featured Fab Lab London and some of the work featured in the Great Recovery design residencies.

*don’t worry we won’t make you wear actual hats

Fab Friday April: Fashion and textiles

Friday 24th April will mark two years since the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex in Dhaka that killed 1400 people and injured thousands more, most of them garment workers. This disaster brought into sharp focus one of a network of grievous issues affecting the global textile and fashion industries: labour abuses, chemical and water pollution, and pre and post-consumer waste to name a few.

On this day campaigners, brands, consumers and NGOs around the globe will come together as Fashion Revolution, a campaign to mark the anniversary and make a united call to change the industry.

At this month’s Fab Friday, inspired by the Fashion Revolution campaign, The Great Recovery and Fab Lab London invite you to join us as we explore how the clothes we wear can become ‘circular by design’.

More details to follow

Sign up here

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.

We challenged visitors at Resource 2015 to play the Game of Circularity. Setting out to manufacture a consumer product, they had to make decisions at a series of design junctions: Virgin or recycled material? Global or Local manufacture? Design for longevity or for disposal? These choices sent their trains off on different tracks and to different destinations, would they reach circular enlightenment or head straight to landfill?

Read more about our stand at Resource 2015 here

Film: Paul Wyatt (http://www.paulwyatt.co.uk)

When I tell people that I am trying to promote the circular economy, I am often met with a blank stare. But when I explain the drivers for moving away from our current model (we have a finite amount of resources, increasing demand for those resources and an environment which is burdened by our current ‘take, make, throw away’ thinking), then they are pretty well understood. Everyone has experienced the frustration of having to chuck away a kettle because of a broken lid, or the guilt of throwing plastic into a waste bin. At the basic level, people get it: it is common sense to design products and systems so that they can be reused, recycled, leased or repaired and remanufactured.

But if the need to change from a linear view to a cyclical one is not hard to grasp, ask people to explain what this means in practice and we’re back to the blank faces. Hiding beneath the surface of this simple and beautiful concept is a tangle of mind-blowingly complexity.

So, to change our route, we need people to be engaged and empowered enough to really start to unpick, tackle and implement the changes needed. We need to prototype new types of products, but above all we need to communicate a systemic picture of the circular economy.

Engaging the Engine of Design

At the recent Resource show 2015, we created a stand reflecting circularity in action: from design, through manufacturing, to waste, with loops for redesign and repair.

Centre stage rolled the Circular Economy Train…nostalgic, engaging and fun; this enormous Brio set certainly drew the crowds. Players were tasked with manufacturing a household product by making real design decisions, about material type, business model and supply chain, at a series of ‘design junctions’ as their engine traversed the route. From first year students through to the entire sustainability team from Marks & Spencer, there was stiff competition to design the best way through the game, and prevent the little engines toppling straight into the landfill (a bucket at the end of the table!)

But it wasn’t simple. In making a product you are connected, by default, with much wider systems than may be represented by your own business plan. And so, in our game, you could make great choices of your own but still be knocked out of line by external forces: global competition for land and resources, fickle trends, costs of transportation. All these are challenges facing the designers of a new circular economy and were represented by our ‘tunnel of conflict’, ‘resource randomiser’ (spin to determine your fate) and a pack of action cards – just like Chance in Monopoly. The genius of the game was that it enabled us to show, at a glance, not only the complexity of circularity but also the deterministic nature of design in deciding the fate of products.

The rest of the stand was zoned to take you through the stages of a circular economy: Design, Making and Use or Waste.

We showcased designers whose work is already nudging us towards circular thinking: Rob Maslin from We All Design who is developing service design for a circular economy; Rich Gilbert from the Agency of Design who is working with clients on products for return and circularity; and the Restart Project who, as skilled repairers, are enabling us to extend the lifetimes of our everyday electronics.

In the manufacturing zone we hosted a pop-up makespace with our partners at Fab Lab London, complete with 3D printers and laser cutters, and demonstrating the potential for new technologies to help innovate and prototype new design practices. Fab Lab were also on hand to help us put repair into action, printing a replacement handle for a toaster and thus helping to extend its life. Along with Restart this represented the opportunity for not only experts but also citizens and communities to get involved in design.

The use and waste phase of the economy was represented by our recent Bulky Waste Design Residency with SITA, and highlighted the challenges and the potential in dealing with large household items and furniture at end of life. Our Kitchen Table hosted pop-up workshops with the design residents themselves, and also saw serendipitous meetings between mattress entrepreneurs, behaviour change students and business leaders.

Over the three days we played games, we shared stories, and we found fascinating and enlightening insights.

And the final destination for circular economy? Not the end of the track but, according to our game, circular enlightenment and product heaven! Most importantly, an alignment of economic, social and environmental objectives. And who wouldn’t want to get there?

With special thanks for PwC for sponsoring the prizes for the Circular Train game. Two delighted top scorers of the game each won a beautiful Elvis & Kresse bag, made from decomissioned fire hoses.

This year we will be showcasing the circular economy in action, with design booths (courtesy of The Restart Project, Agency of Design and We all Design), a making and manufacturing lab (hosted by our collaborators Fab Lab London), and a funky ‘used living room’ (think bedsit) space, where three designers from our SITA UK Bulky Waste Design Residency will be showing their work and leading discussions about problem furniture and system redesign.

So pop the 3-5th March in your diary now and come along to see closed loop design in action!