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Addressing Climate Change: Embracing Circular Product Design
Addressing Climate Change: Embracing Circular Product Design

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Climate change stands as the paramount menace to our planet, wielding a formidable impact on our environment, depleting natural resources, and imperiling human life. Simultaneously, it poses a substantial threat to the global economy.


When we confront the challenge of climate change, our minds instinctively gravitate towards plastic pollution, the CO2 emissions stemming from fossil fuel-powered vehicles and thermal power plants. These concerns tend to overshadow the broader perspective, such as the urgent need to reevaluate the products and services that we employ daily—a profound source of waste that invariably finds its way into landfills.

While initiatives like banning plastic, adopting electric vehicles, and embracing renewable energy sources like solar and wind power capture our attention, there exists a critical facet that often remains neglected: the transformation of our products and services with a circular approach. It is imperative to realize that while electric vehicles and clean energy solutions can contribute to a 55% reduction in emissions and carbon footprints, an additional 45% can be achieved through the deliberate design of products with circularity principles, a realm still largely unexplored and estimated to represent a staggering $4.5 trillion opportunity according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

Our current economic model adheres to a linear approach. It entails extracting resources such as minerals and oil from the natural world, using them to create products, utilizing these products, and finally disposing of them, resulting in the generation of hazardous waste that poses a grave threat to our environment. Circular Economy, in stark contrast, advocates an alternative perspective—a closed-loop system.

Circular Economy

In the words of Ellen MacArthur, a distinguished sailor and founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, "We are trying to change a system, not just one business. We need to alter the way people think, the way things are designed, and the materials that are incorporated into them." Transitioning to a circular economy proves to be a formidable challenge without integrating circular principles into product design. One of the primary hurdles lies in the substantial need for prototyping and testing to ensure that the product, throughout its entire life cycle, remains environmentally friendly, minimizes its carbon footprint, and avoids the ignominious fate of ending up in landfills.

This approach demands innovation in various industries:

1. Metallurgy Industry: Innovate metals and alloys with minimal energy intensity, leading to reduced energy consumption in extraction, refinement, and processing, as well as lower wastage and greater reusability.

2. Appliances/Smartphone Industry: Foster products designed for maximum repairability, assessed on a scale of 0-10 to determine ease of repair.

3. Electronics Industry: Develop safer alternatives to existing lithium-ion batteries, enhancing both safety and environmental sustainability.

4. Apparel/Fashion Industry: Design clothing with minimal environmental impact, focusing on reusable fibers and yarns.

5. Automobile Industry: Create components and parts that are amenable to re-engineering and re-manufacturing, with recycling as a last resort.

6. Food Industry: Revamp logistics and delivery systems to ensure that food reaches the consumer before its expiration date, employing intelligent logistics and dynamic pricing models.

These are just a few examples of the countless opportunities across various industries to infuse circularity principles into product design. The essence of the circular economy lies in eliminating waste through innovative design rather than merely recycling it.

In conclusion, addressing climate change necessitates a profound shift in our approach to product design. Embracing circular product design offers a significant avenue to mitigate environmental harm, minimize waste, and usher in a more sustainable future for our planet.


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Digital Transformation, Enterprise & Product Innovation, AI Machine Vision, GovTech, HealthTech, Circular Design, Remanufacturing & Sustainability | @SAP Consulting & Author | Salzburg Global Fellow 2020.

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