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.

As discussed in our first blog, the main reason we chose to redesign disposable razors is that they can’t be easily recycled. It’s difficult and can be dangerous to separate the blade from the rest of the product, and is not economic to do so in terms of labour costs. It is also most likely that they end up in black bin bag waste along with other non-recyclables, ultimately ending their life in incineration or landfill.

In order to carry out our research, we bought various different types of razors from a chemist, varying in quality and price. These were then broken down to analyse the materials used, number of parts, amount of materials, weight, and ease of disassembly.

Customer Research

We carried out customer research to understand people’s motivation for buying one type of razor as opposed to another.

Whilst customers focus most on economic factors – the price of the razor – they do also think about quality. Customers often don’t realise the number of available options outside of their local store or pharmacy, which include double-edge safety razors for example where 100 blades can be bought for as little as £4, compared to buying 4 cartridges for £15 .

The problem these users encounter is that they use the razor cartridges for much longer than they should in order to save money, but at the expense of their skin – as when the razor gets dull it produces tugging and irritation.

The way razor companies deal with this is by selling shaving gel, and adding numbing agent chemicals  so it doesn’t hurt you as much when the razor tugs. These chemicals are not good for long term use and can cause premature aging and drying. Even the synthetic colour and scent of the cream can cause irritation.

If men (and for the purposes of this project we have focused mostly on men) had a larger offer of different products – for example old school double edge safety razors, instead of the same product manufactured by different brands, they might discover that there are cheaper and potentially healthier options available.

Interview with Waste Manager (Regis Road Recycling Camden) + Barber (Murdock London)

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.

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’.

This was a realization of a vision had some 2 years before when Nat Hunter and I were brainstorming what would bring about the kind of disruptive behaviour that was needed to bring about the circular economy.

The Great Recovery work to date had signalled to us that design was the creative stimuli needed to kick old business models and managers stuck in established pathways back into the innovation light. And so one day, at a café table, the visual sketch was drawn, like a yin-yang diagram of two worlds colliding: the hacked together and slightly revolutionary creative disrupters of the Fab Lab world and those that inhabited the business landscape, desperate for new ideas but not knowing where to turn.

These spaces aren’t new. The phenomenon of innovation hubs, fabrication hubs and make spaces have been around for a while; it’s the accessibility that is key. What is new is the articulation around circular economic thinking and redesigning that The Great Recovery brings to Fab Lab London.

I have been asked by several people why you need circular economy thinking in a Fab Lab. Here, in a nutshell, are my reasons:

1. Disruption

Feedback from businesses we work with at The Great Recovery mentions their need for ‘disruptive’ thinking and doing to shift the stagnant business-as-usual stalwarts to being able to see the opportunity. This needs different types of thinkers and creators, and Fab Lab members are pretty hot in this area.

2. Rapid Prototyping

Circular Economy at scale is an unknown quantity, and so rapid routes to market and fast prototyping are crucial. Designers and businesses need to print out, test, put together, take apart and bring to market quickly in order to get a fast, iterative design process going. If a product is to be redeveloped around a re-manufacturing model for instance, then speedy prototyping for component disassembly is a must.

3. Knowledge sharing

This is an obvious one and a key to successful circular activity. The Fab Lab guys know stuff that we don’t. It’s humbling to watch someone with technical know-how work, and it’s no wonder that businesses who are looking for innovation in circularity want some of this expertise. On the flip side, the Great Recovery is here to help increase understanding and awareness around sustainable thinking and circularity. Closing the loop through design isn’t easy to get your head around. Not only that, but you need to have a lot of the network of supply chain and end of life sitting around you when you do redesign things because more often than not it involves a complete system reboot. This is where our Circular Network comes in.

4. Longevity through fixing and customisation

Encouraging re-use by fixing and hacking takes the circularity focus closer to the inner loop (see Four Design Models diagram below) where increased utilization of the product makes the most of the embodied energy from initial production. Rather than see a defunct product through a technical lens and immediately break it down to raw materials, as is often the case for those that work in this area, we can extend its use by hacking and fixing in the Lab. Our teardown and design up methodology promotes this, and we work with businesses and community groups like Restart and Bright Sparks to teach us where re-use value lies (as well as point out bad models of product obsolescence!)

FabLab have additive (3D printers) and reductive (laser cutter) printing kit which are also key for the circular designer. A new cooker knob can be open sourced and printed on a 3D autobot; a laser cutter can optimize your cutting for minimal material wastage (think getting the most out of cookie cutting) or customize your product for greater user attachment.

5. Re-thinking waste streams

In one of our very first videos for The Great Recovery, our facilitator Mark Shayler talked about a product being a transient moment in time for the materials stream that flows around the economic system. This insight is the basis for our process of tear down and design up. Working with those that ‘hack’ electronics is eye opening in that they see the space between. For them opportunity lies in the component building blocks –part of a washing machine that can be reutilized in urban aquaponics, a motorized unit from a broken printer can be used to create a 3D scanner. Where we see a broken down product and only scrap material value, the Fab Labbers may see valuable components that do specific and transferable tasks.

6. Unlocking information flows

Fab Labs are hotspots for Arduino and sensor technology development, and circular thinking needs this to help unlock the data flows that accompany our products. We can’t build solutions to waste reduction if we don’t know where things are and how long they stay there. In order to understand where our stuff is at any given moment, in order to get it back for reuse or repair, we need to develop some serious sensor-driven tracking data.

The Great Recovery programme is about networking and action, testing and piloting. This new Fab Lab space allows us to do just that, to bring together novices and experts, make open calls to those that want to learn about circular design, and create new models for the stuff all around us.

*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

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!

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.

The phenomenon of innovation hubs, fabrication hubs and make spaces have been around for a while, and the accessibility they bring is key. Literally anybody can turn up, get trained on the laser cutter, 3D printer or milling machine, and make something for and by themselves. What is new is the emphasis on circular economy thinking that The RSA Great Recovery brings to Fab Lab London, the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ of making, and the use of design as a creative as well as disruptive influence.

What will the day look like?

Each Fab Friday will have a slightly different theme and structure, but the basic building blocks are outlined below. They are designed to give you an insight into the work of The Great Recovery and Fab Lab London; help give you the tools to take your next steps; and provide an opportunity to share learning, insights and discussion with a great group. Each session will run from 13:00 to around 16:00 on the last Friday of the month.

‘Circular Economy for Dummies’ with the RSA Great Recovery

The Great Recovery team will give an introduction to the project and some of the concepts associated with designing for a circular economy. They will look at the practical opportunities and challenges that face us in the 21st century, and will examine some of the social and end-of-life implications of the products you might make in a Fab Lab.

 Intro to Fab Lab

The Fab Lab team will introduce you to their world. You will learn about what you can create in a Fab Lab, how the machines work, and which materials you might use.

Rethink, Redesign, Remake: Innovate &Play…

The Great Recovery and Fab Lab teams will run a practical ‘tear-down’ and ‘design-up’ session, in which you can dissect everyday items (think broken mobile phones or laptops, old shoes & clothes).

– We will consider some of the materials in these products, where they might have come from and where they’re likely to end up.

– We will look at some new applications for this so-called ‘waste’, or ways of repairing and repurposing items, and see how the Fab Lab kit can help

With a slightly different focus each week, you will introduced to use Fab Lab’s facilities (machines, tools, materials, event space and experts!) and begin to learn how to re-design different products or business models and prototype your ideas.

Next steps

– We will consider what individual action can be taken to improve circularity, and what wider systemic change is needed

Sign up for a Fab Friday here

Want to have a Fab Lab kit induction too?

If you would like to attend a Fab Lab and /or laser cutter induction in the morning, please sign up directly on the Fab Lab website.

We were also able to hand him the recommendations from our recent roundtable on policy and legislation for circular economy, and we very much hope that these will be considered by manifesto writers and policymakers over the next few months!

Rogerson said:

“This government is committed to ensuring we use our resources more carefully and the UK is now producing less waste than ever before. We all have a responsibility to tackle waste and I congratulate Fab Lab and The RSA Great Recovery on its innovative workshops which can help businesses develop the skills they need to create new products out of existing materials. There are massive opportunities for businesses to make money from repairing, re-using and remanufacturing equipment to extend the life of products. Using our resources more carefully is not only good for the environment, it’s also vital to build a stronger economy and fairer society.”