Tag Archive | circular design

Waste does not exist

Apr23

Many companies are facing the challenge of changing their linear business into a circular one. How to do that and at the same time gain more customers, loyal to your business? How to make this necessary change into a win-win situation for all stakeholders? And the bottom line: how to make sustainability into profitable business?  

Designers and innovators from three countries, Finland, Estonia and Sweden discussed circular design and transition to more sustainable living in an online workshop called Speed up transition with Circular Design on 29 March 2021. The webinar was organized by Design Forum Finland, Swedish Industrial Design Foundation (SVID) and Estonian Design Center. The seminar was part of the Eco-design Circle 4.0, an international project with the purpose to strengthen awareness and practical application of circular design and to enhance the capability of small and medium-size enterprises to make use of eco-design.

It is not only about recycling

While the linear business is based on the idea of “take, make, waste”, a truly circular economy relies on the notion that each step throughout the entire life cycle of a product or service is reviewed against a set of circularity criteria.

For many goods and materials, sufficient infrastructure exists for recycling them. But not for all. For example, there are no industry standards defining composition for plastics, and plastic goods are also added other substances to provide or improve performance characteristics. This makes their recycling very complex. Hence, the circular economy is not only about recycling the materials, but also keeping what we have already processed viable and in use for as long as possible, and reusing what we’ve already extracted and processed.

Picture: Picture: Michael Kirschner. https://www.eetimes.com/from-linear-to-circular-product-cycle

In circular economy, all materials should circulate and the circular loops should be as closed as possible, not allowing leaks of usable materials. Every time the loop leaks, you lose value. In a perfect circular economy, waste simply does not exist. Before recycling the materials of the product, we should try to find ways of using the waste product in an efficient manner. Thinking innovatively, this “waste” can be valuable material for either your own company, or to some other organization.

During the webinar the main areas of circular design and the benefits of using it were discussed. The participants were provided with tips on critical parts of the process, and a few tools to make one`s business become circular were presented. The most inspiring part of the seminar was the presentation of case examples from different industries that concretized the topic providing us first-hand experiences of the journeys that organizations had taken to become more circular.

From Product Thinking to Service Thinking

Astonishingly, 80 % of the environmental impact of a product is already determined in the stage of its design. Hence, it is very important that designers are familiar with the principles and possibilities of eco-design and circular economy. The first thing to do is to ask: do we really need this product or service? If the answer is positive, we have to make sure to give longer life to products – designing from the beginning how to make sure the product stays longer in use. In short, we need more service thinking instead of product thinking.

When designing new products or services, the materials should be selected so that their impact on the sustainability (environmental, climate, social etc.) can be minimized.

The distribution and packaging are another major issue when defining the sustainability of the product or service. It goes without saying that light weight helps reduce CO2 emissions. It is worth optimizing and designing well the delivery and packaging. An example given by SVID`s Project Manager Anna Velander Gisslen was about Kinnarps which managed to reduce their transport needs by 50 %, using old blankets in the packaging.

Service design thinking is a key strategy into circularity. Co-creation in the design process helps identifying the needs and possible ways of becoming sustainable. What should you prioritize, what areas are the most critical ones in your business, and how to measure change and impact? Participating in a design sprint, or other type of eco-design co-creation forum will provide insights on how individual companies can start to implement circularity, and what must change to achieve its widespread adoption and implementation in the company.

The importance of analyzing thoroughly customers` ideas, hopes and expectations was raised by several speakers. Going circular is not only about the company; it`s even more about its customers. Circular solutions should be user-tested and gain true user attraction. They should not be solutions that are OK: they should be the most desired solutions for both the customers and the company. Co-design is possible also through virtual means (Zoom, Teams etc.). Hence, it pays back to put time and resources to a proper co-creation in the design process.

Tools

Strengthening the circularity is not something you are expected to do alone. Guides and tools are available. The Design Forum of Finland has used a set of tools with organizations aspiring to become circular. These include for example Eco-design learning factory, Eco-design audit and Eco-design sprints. In addition, there are tools and services that help organizations to create strategy roadmaps, certification systems to guarantee circularity, and marketing and communication tools to tell the customers about the perspectives and steps taken. According to Aino Vepsäläinen from DFF, in the beginning the focus was more on products, while lately it has been mainly on services.

Design Forum has implemented several design sprints on circular design. The sprints usually involve coach, a client company and a design agency. Eco-design Sprints usually consist of 3 phases: Understand, Ideate, and Deliver. Understanding phase may include identification of the lifecycle of the product or service, circular value mapping, context analysis, and discovering possible circular strategies. Delivery phase normally comes a couple of weeks later and includes identification of next steps.

According to Estonian Strategic Designer Joel Kotsjuba, key takeaways from eco-design sprints are that they provide good ground understanding of circular design (its theory, concepts, strategies and methodologies), build momentum for change, find key opportunities, help engage decision-making structures, allow constructing a follow-up plan, give insights into implementation, provide numerous ideas to improve customer and employee satisfaction, and help in evaluating and selection of first ideas for testing. These small wins and proofs of concept will help “selling” the idea further.

The New Normal

Picture: Karma. https://karma.life/about-food-waste

One third of all food produced globally is thrown away, and the impact of food waste is 4 times greater than the impact of all flights in the world combined. These were some of the facts that inspired a group of young Swedes to create a company that focuses on reducing food waste. Through their Karma mobile application restaurants, cafés and grocery stores can sell their waste food. While helping them to sell the waste, Karma also advises companies on how much to produce. Less production means less waste. By now, Karma has rescued over 1,200 tonnes of food, saved more than 4 million meals and eliminated over 1,800 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Another concrete example of circular economy initiative came from Helsinki city. Think Sustainably is a new service that lets users select service providers that are committed to responsible operations. It helps consumers prioritise sustainable services and thereby motivates a wide range of different actors and service providers to focus on sustainable ways of doing business. This online tool covers services, transport and experiences: restaurants, accommodation, events, shops etc. There are now 130 companies participating in this initiative, and the criteria for circularity is a “fits all” model – the companies are committed to doing changes that require long-term commitment but are not extremely difficult to implement.

Changing linear business into a circular one must have tangible impact and at the same time be profitable. To be truly sustainable means being sustainable also economically. There`s a remarkable business value for companies to find and commit to new sustainable solutions. Companies have constant fight over consumers` time and money and by becoming more circular they will improve their competitiveness. From the consumer point of view, sustainable choices must be easily embedded in their daily life. Sustainability has to be effortless. As Karma puts it: “You can now save the planet by doing the simplest thing on earth. Eating.“

Laura Ekholm

More information can be found:

EcoDesign Circle 4.0: https://www.ecodesigncircle.eu

Karma Sweden: https://karma.life

Think Sustainably Helsinki: https://www.myhelsinki.fi/en/think-sustainably

Going Circular

Jun17

Event: LOOP Circular case studies, webinar series in May and June 2020

A couple of months ago I participated in a circular design workshop, where I became acquainted with the key concepts of circular design. As the topic was really interesting, it was inspirational to find a webinar series with presentations of concrete cases how to move from linear to circular economy in practise. Webinar series was provided by LOOP which is a Nordic Innovation ecosystem with interest in making companies go circular. It was founded in 2018 as a cooperation between Avanto Ventures, Sitra and Nordic Innovation, and the network is continuously expanding. As circular economy demands partnerships and collaboration, LOOP ecosystem is a response to those demands.

The webinar series, which included four webinars, was held during May and June 2020 and all the cases were extremely interesting and highlighted well different aspects that must be taken into consideration in circular design – for example new business models, importance of collaboration and role of ecosystems. In this blogpost I will go through briefly three cases: case Fiskars Vintage, Omocom and TotalCtrl. In addition to shortly explain the cases, I will focus especially on discussing my main takeaways from the circular design point of view.

Circular into profitable business – Case Vintage from Fiskars

In the first webinar Nora Haatainen, Director, New Business and Growth, from Fiskars Group described how Fiskars Group, an old consumer goods company, has started to create value to the customers through new business opportunities in the circular economy. Fiskars Group has set sustainability targets, which aim to find ways for reusing, reselling, and recycling their main brand products. It was really interesting to hear how a company with a long history of manufacturing moves towards circular economy.

The project that Haatainen explained in her presentation was about one of Fiskars’ main category, tableware, and considered especially brands Iittala and Arabia. The purpose was to find out specifically what kind of aftermarket business opportunities there exists from circular economy point of view. Focusing on the smallest circular loop – reusing and reselling – is logical from the profitability perspective because it retains the value the best way as the products do not demand processing. As any business projects, also circular business projects must be profitable and valuable to the customer in order to be successful in the future. For this purpose, key performance indicators were specified right in the beginning of the project, defining aims for the business perspective as well as customer perspective (Picture 1).

Picture 1. Key performance indicators (Slide from the presentation of Haatainen)

It was interesting to hear the different steps of design process, how it proceeded from ideation, hypothesis creation and co-designing with the customers to business simulation and in the end, selecting four most potential service concepts for piloting. The first new service concept from the project – Vintage Service – is already normal business for Fiskars Group. It allows people to buy and sell old and used Iittala and Arabia tableware products through Fiskars Group’s own retail channels. Currently Fiskars Group has done piloting for another service concept, Arabia Tableware Service, which is a subscription-based tableware service.

For me, the presentation showed well that it is possible to move from linear to circular business models, but it also became clear that there are many challenges along the way. The first challenge is to look beyond the linear model – it requires a fundamental shift in thinking, because circular design demands overcoming the dominant industry logic. Another challenge is to remember that having a circular business model is not good enough, it must work also in practice. Based on the experiences from the project, Haatainen emphasizes the importance of the core team: they should have different kind of skills, a lot of can-do attitude, and they must be empowered. Another advise is to start piloting as early as possible in order to get things to move on – endless discussions will not take you anywhere.

Circular economy demands new solutions – Case Omocom

The other speaker of the first webinar was Ola Lowden, a Founder of Omocom, a Swedish digital insurance solution start-up. The story of Omocom began when the founders worked for Swedish government as digital trade experts and they interviewed big insurance companies about their capabilities to answer to the demands of new consumption types of sharing economy. They found out that insurance companies were not able to adapt their offerings to these new requirements. It became clear that moving towards sharing and circular economy requires a new kind of insurance model, which encourages people to share their belongings.

Based on this, Omocom created a digital insurance solution for sharing platforms. Having an insurance is important for sharing platform providers, as it builds trust between people who do not know each other beforehand. Also, even if damages happen, insurance keeps customers satisfied and willing to continue to use the sharing platform. In the solution, Omocom does collaboration with insurance companies who bear the insurance-related risk, while Omocom takes care for example development of software and insurance solutions.

From sharing and circular economy point of view the founders of Omocom found traditional insurance challenging especially for three reasons (Picture 2).

Picture 2. Challenges with traditional insurance and circular economy (Slide from the presentation of Lowden)

The first challenge with traditional insurance is the model, as the focus and responsibility are only on product owner, not on the product user. This kind of model does not encourage people to share their belongings, especially with strangers. The answer from the Omocom solution is to focus also on product user and provide short-term insurances that are suitable for renting and sharing. The second challenge is that insurance companies are highly dependent on data. If they do not have enough data for risk calculations, they are not willing to take the risk. Omocom deals with this challenge by collaborating with sharing platforms, and based on the data that they provide, Omocom has developed their own risk calculation algorithm, which can be used for risk assessment. Third challenge is that some of the services from insurance companies are still analogue, which makes them quite slow and inflexible, and digital solution responses to these challenges as well.

I think that Omocom is a good example of how moving from linear economy to circular economy creates new business opportunities. There is a need for new kind of solutions and business models, which answer to the demands of circular economy. Also, it clearly showed that in order to make a successful circular business model, it must be a part of an ecosystem of circular business models to ensure the circular flow of resources. This means, that when designing circular business models, the focus should be also on systems level.

Preventing food waste with technology – Case TotalCtrl

The topic of the last webinar was food waste, which was extremely interesting subject for me, as food and eating have been the subject of many of my work projects. From circular economy point of view, the food waste problem is enormous, and solving that is really crucial in the future. Charlotte Aschim, the Founder and CEO of Norwegian start-up TotalCtrl, gave a presentation of how their solution – food waste prevention software called TotalCtrl Restaurant – is tackling the problem in restaurant context (Picture 3).

Picture 3. TotalCtrl Restaurant (Photos from the presentation of Aschim)

The food waste problem became familiar to the founders of TotalCtrl already when working at grocery stores as students. Based on their own experience and later when doing collaboration with different restaurants, they noticed that food waste problem was due to the fact that many restaurants did not have a proper control over their food inventory. The result from this is that food expires quite easily and finding out how much food and what kind of food there exists in storage requires a lot of manual work. It was understood that there is a demand for an easy-to-use digital solution, which helps restaurants to know what kind of food they have in their storage, in which storage it is and when it is going to expire.

Based on the experiences with TotalCtrl Restaurant so far, it seems that it is possible to diminish food waste even up to 85%. In addition, the solution saves time and money, as it simplifies daily routines. For me, TotalCtrl was a good example of how going circular actually can go hand in hand with profitability. Also, it shows that sometimes with right kind of technological solution, it is possible to take a huge step in business and in profitability.

From the perspective of service design, it was interesting to hear the importance of observation in developing and designing the digital solution. Aschim mentioned that although restaurant staff answered to several questions during development work, many things that were important from the perspective of food waste did not come up until doing observation days in restaurants. It seems that many restaurants have inefficient everyday routines, that are taken for granted, and recognizing these could provide opportunities to improve business.

Above I went through just some of the cases which were presented in LOOP webinar series. If you are interested to know more concrete examples from circular economy and circular design, there is a possibility to join to LOOP digital ecosystem where all the cases are available.

Author: Erika Niemi-Vanala