Product Circularity – Insights from Industry
25th April 2024 3.00 – 4.00 PM GMT (4.00 – 5.00 PM CET)
Online: Zoom
Introduction
The use of the concept of Circular Economy (CE) within government, policy, industry, and academia has grown exponentially in the last decade. International ISO CE standards are now set to be launched in May 2024, including ISO 59020:2024 on terminology and European CEN standards activity is starting. Research indicated that most CE activity in industry has been at an organisational and process level rather than on a product level. To increase understanding of product circularity (PC) issues in industry, The Centre for Sustainable Design ® (CfSD) at UCA completed research into PC considerations within design and development as part of its involvement in ORIENTING, a European Commission Horizon 2020 project. Findings from this research highlighted a lack of harmonization of the concept of PC and CE more generally across different sectors. The research also highlighted that existing methodologies that quantitively assess PC performance for internal decision making and external communications, focus primarily on assessing the use of recycled material inflows and outflow. Equally, the research indiated that measuring use phase related PC issues e.g., repair, reuse, etc. is still in the early stages due to a lack of data on customer use by companies. A report based on the research can be downloaded here. To supplement this research, CfSD is also organising a workshop on Circular and Regenerative Design at the World Circular Economy Forum 2024 – register separately here.
ORIENTING
The ORIENTING project was established to develop an operational life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) methodology to integrate environmental, social, economic (and criticality and circularity) considerations to support company decision-making related to CE. The project was undertaken from November 2020 to April 2024 and was funded via European Commission Horizon 2020.
Objectives
This webinar will communicate industry insights on product circularity (PC) related issues in the context of design and development, and highlight findings on PC assessment in the context of a LCSA. The webinar will present findings from 21 in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with industry between August 2021 and March 2022.
The webinar will highlight:
Audience
The webinar is targeted at those involved in managing circular economy in companies and those engaged in design and development, but likely to be of interest to those managing the overall sustainability portfolio.
Registration
The event is free of charge, but you will need to register with lilian.sanchezmoreno@uca.ac.uk by sending your name, job title and organisation. On receipt, you will be sent instructions to join the webinar.
Funding
This research was partly funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No. 958231.
Further information
For more information contact:
Lilian Sanchez Moreno
The Centre for Sustainable Design ®
Business School for the Creative Industries
UCA
lilian.sanchezmoreno@uca.ac.uk
