Managing complex products to support the circular economy

Abstract

The circular economy champions recovering materials and returning them to productivity, and advocates designing out pollution, retaining materials for re-use, and being regenerative, instead of conventional disposal in our current linear economy. However, for the circular economy to succeed, waste materials need to be efficiently returned for production and the time-tested processes of reuse, recovery, and recycling will be essential. This paper provides an enhanced perspective on critical issues that need to be addressed to enable the circular economy. Much of the popular efforts presently target recovering simple consumer products (e.g., beverage containers). However, there are greater challenges when considering multiple materials from complex consumer products, such as electronics or automobiles, that have reached their end-of-life. These challenges include how to address: material identification and separation; ensuring purity; distribution and transportation; and establishing a viable market for recovered goods/materials. The circular economy further emphasizes the design of products and services to facilitate restorative mechanisms. However, product design varies significantly across different consumer items, and the trade-offs engineers and designers make for enabling circularity from complex goods will vary significantly compared to simple goods. Finally, while it is essential to embrace a new design ethic for future products or services, significantly more attention is needed towards enhancing the reuse and recovery potential from “current” end-of-life complex products because they were designed one or two generations ago: they are unlikely to have circularity designed into their makeup. Innovation in improving the recovery of EoL complex consumer products will be vital to supporting a robust circular economy.