Fitness of product and service design for closed-loop material recycling: A framework and indicator

Abstract

Material recycling is the most common strategy in various circular economy concepts. However, material quality generally degrades during recycling because materials get contaminated or some substances dissipate. This translates to that materials are instead recycled in an open loop, or in other words, in a cascade. Current quantitative performance measurement approaches insufficiently address a clear distinction between closed-loop and open-loop recycling. To effectively preserve material quality, a different measurement approach is required to assess the ability of product and service design to retain material quality during material recycling. Such a metric is introduced here with the fitness for closed-loop material recycling indicator Θ. This kind of quality assessment requires a criterion based on the elemental composition of the materials. The concept is illustrated in a case study on metals embodied in a residential gas heating appliance showing that the closed-loop recycling potential of such an appliance is only 1%.