Abstract
The goal of pursuing the circular economy (CE) is spreading more and more in industry, also driven by the introduction of new regulations, considerably affecting product design. However, a quantitative and rigorous evaluation of the environmental impacts of the results obtained by different design strategies used to implementing CE is missing in the literature. Those available only evaluate certain aspects of the life cycle of few products, belonging to specific application fields, in a qualitative way or they refer only to the global warming potential. This study provides a quantitative assessment of the environmental impacts reductions arising from the application of some common design strategies for implementing different CE options (e.g. reuse, waste to energy, remanufacturing), by using some standard indicators. The results were obtained by manually analysing 156 selected case studies of comparative life cycle assessment (LCA), extracted from 136 scientific articles. In them, the environmental impacts of design solutions for CE are compared with those of other solutions were wastes are not exploited. The obtained results have been used to evaluate the different design strategies for CE and to hierarchize them based on environmental sustainability of the solutions associated with them. In addition, an economic evaluation of the strategies, based on the life cycle costing methodology and exploiting the data available in the same articles, was also provided. Among the main achievements, it was found that the hierarchy of the CE options, pursued by the design strategies, to improve environmental sustainability is different from that provided by other studies. In addition, the environmental benefits associated with the different CE options strictly depend by the applied design strategies and the considered products.Graphical abstract
Highlights
The implementation of the circular economy (CE) is increasingly becoming a fundamental requirement to be1 3 Vol.: (0123456789)180 Page 2 of 33 achieved during product design
This study proposes an evaluation of the environmental benefits arising from different products as a result of the application of different design strategies to support CE, which have been carefully selected in the literature
The presentation of the results goes into the merits of the individual design strategies and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of specific applications according to all the considered environmental impact categories
Summary
The implementation of the circular economy (CE) is increasingly becoming a fundamental requirement to be1 3 Vol.: (0123456789)180 Page 2 of 33 achieved during product design. Products should be more robust to increase the operative life and reduce maintenance interventions (e.g. Van den Berg & Bakker, 2015). Any intervention on the product, during maintenance and disassembly, must be carried out by reducing the required energy and auxiliary materials. For this reason, the products should be designed for the disposals as well as to guarantee the functioning An unusable product must be recycled as much as possible and energy must be obtained from the disposal of non-recyclable parts, by creating new synergies with the supply chain of the same and other products (e.g. Habagil et al, 2020; Yuan et al, 2014)
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