Innovative product cycles for a circular economy

“Circular economy” is a buzzword containing promises to cut waste, protect resources, and promote business. But the use of the term is inflationary. In the last decade, the number of technical papers has multiplied, and new – “circular” – business models have been created.

Two questions must be carefully considered in any circular economy investment: How can a circular economy solution be more effective than conventional waste management? How can money be earned with circular business models? Germany’s ReziProK funding measure, with 25 different R&D projects,[1] has looked for answers to both these questions. The research projects aim to close product cycles by developing design concepts, digital technologies, and appropriate business models. The research results are then to be transferred into economic practice and marketable products as quickly as possible to strengthen companies in Germany as competitive suppliers of circular economy solutions. The projects focus on:

For more details, please visit this website. [1] “Resource-efficient Circular Economy – Innovative Product Cycles” (ReziProK) is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Projects started in 2019 and will be finalised by the end of 2023. The results presented here were summarised by RessWInn, a networking and transfer project within ReziProK implemented by DECHEMA, Frankfurt, Germany, and N³ Thinking Ahead, Voerde, Germany.

Numerous physical, technical, and economic obstacles to material recovery and reuse are known from waste management:

The products distributed to millions of consumers in a short period become waste after being used for varying lengths of time. After use, information about their material composition and technical condition is lost. Consequently, the reuse of products from waste is mostly impossible.

In the case of recycling, we are confronted with highly entropic mixtures and unknown, potentially hazardous compounds.

These and some other stumbling stones result in many recycling processes costing too much and leaving large amounts of waste.[2]Whereas recycling (R8) and energy recovery (R9) are well-known contributions to the circular economy that start from waste, other strategies are linked to the use phase of products, such as repair or refurbishment (R4-R7), or the design phase (R0-R2). These “circular strategies” are shown in Figure 1.

Nearly all ReziProK projects covered more than one strategy, e.g. DiTex (Fig. 2).

[2] H. Friege and K. Kümmerer: Practising Circular Economy: Stumbling Blocks for Circulation and Recycling. In “The Impossibilities of the Circular Economy – Separating Aspirations from Reality” (Eds.: Harry Lehmann, Christoph Hinske, Victoire de Margerie, and Aneta Slaveikova Nikolova). Open access

Fig. 1: “R-Strategies” aimed at reducing the consumption of material resources (modified and supplemented according to Potting and Hanemaaijer, PBL, The Hague, 2018, see PDF here

The analysis of the project results indicates that paying early attention to the above-mentioned barriers facilitates the assessment of risks and opportunities within the product life cycle. We cannot overcome physical barriers such as entropy, and we cannot predict whether a certain additive will be banned in the future. There are, however, many possibilities to remove obstacles to a circular use of resources. Here are some examples:

Many of the projects focused on design for re-use, recycling, or opportunities to repair or remanufacture a product:

For circular business models, information along the value chain is key. The transfer of information about the material composition and application history of products requires standardised technical solutions that depend on the product in question.

Fig. 2: Process diagram for the production, use, recycling, and tracking of shirts for an ambulance crew, Lippe District, Germany (Source: DiTex project)

If we can identify a used product from a separately collected waste fraction and are aware of its previous function, we could then decide on re-use or appropriate recycling routes. This is indeed possible:

Project EIBA: sensory acquisition, automated identification and evaluation of old parts with the help of self-learning systems

Product-service systems (PSS) are a suitable approach for reducing the dissipative loss of used products using well-organised reverse logistics. Three examples from ReziProK that are already on the market:

Whereas B2B models are celebrating their first successes, B2C approaches are finding it much more difficult to assert themselves:

It is very difficult to assess a product’s contribution to sustainability in terms of its full “life cycle”, including reuse, recycling, etc. In the ConCirMy project, a tool (“configurator”) was developed to provide information on environmental compatibility including recycling and reuse options to various stakeholders in the supply chain, which can be taken into account in purchasing decisions. Tyres were used as an example.

In conclusion, the circular economy offers important opportunities to mitigate well-known problems in waste management. Further research should focus on a differentiation of economic obstacles to better clarify circular economy issues in complex value chains. Providers of waste collection systems should look for opportunities to support retro-logistics, e.g. for reusable packaging. For recyclers, the development of identification systems supported by artificial intelligence will create vast opportunities to assess used products for potential reuse and suitable recycling steps.