From Principles to Practice: Product Design Foundations for a Circular Economy

Published

January 23, 2025

Author(s)

Buddhika Hapuwatte, Noah Last, Sami Karsli, Gaurav Aher, Katherine Morris, Vincenzo Ferrero

Abstract

A circular economy moves from the current linear model of production and consumption, i.e., the take-make-use-dispose model, to one that uses resources efficiently, avoids pollution, and creates triple bottom line (i.e., economic, environmental, and social) sustainability benefits. The transition from a linear to circular economy needs actions to facilitate resource recovery, extend the effective use-life of resources, and improve the productivity of resource utilization in the economy. Product design decisions set and limit possibilities for future activities throughout the entire life cycle. A comprehensive transformation of current design practices is needed to adapt to the new model of production and consumption. However, circular product design is yet to become mainstream in design curricula. Building from a synthesis of literature related to circular product design principles, this paper identifies underlying themes that may be integrated into design curricula. Two qualitative analysis methods were used: Collaborative Thematic Analysis to tag the source circular product principles and create themes out of them, then a Natural Language Processing script to create tags, cluster them, and compare the clusters with the thematic analysis results. Where the design principles target practitioners, these themes aim to teach the fundamentals of circular economy, including how to think about design decisions in a larger circular economy system. Designers will need this fundamental understanding to make use of the specific circularity principles. Future work will further refine the themes identified here and through collaboration with academia and industry narrow the set to provide a foundation for CE and CPD education.

Volume

1

Conference Dates

November 17-21, 2024

Conference Location

Portland, OR, US

Conference Title

International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition 2024

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1115/IMECE2024-146537

Local Download

Keywords

Circular Product Design, Circular Economy, Design for Circularity, Knowledge Transfer, Natural Language Processing, Thematic Analysis, Design Principles

Citation

Hapuwatte, B. , Last, N. , Karsli, S. , Aher, G. , Morris, K. and Ferrero, V. (2025), From Principles to Practice: Product Design Foundations for a Circular Economy, International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition 2024, Portland, OR, US, [online], https://doi.org/10.1115/IMECE2024-146537, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=958050 (Accessed April 10, 2025)