Twings

Twings: A Platform Concept Towards Mainstreaming circular Economy Strategies

Akkerman, Bootsy (TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering)

Nas, D.N. (mentor)
Baldassarre, B.R. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Strategic Product Design

2021-05-21

The ever growing world population - 10 billion by 2050 - brings many challenges to the table. One of the most imminent is the way we handle and take care of our planets natural resources. More people means more needs. How do are we going provide for all these people? Over the past decades, we have reached a general consensus that our planet is a closed system: what you take, is taken forever. In other words, limitless growth without treating earths resources accordingly, is a myth. Our current economic system in place does not coincide with this consensus. This economy encourages a linear, take-make-waste, approach which thrives on the depletion of earths resource supplies. Looking ahead, at the world of 10 billion people, its not hard to understand that the linear economy is no longer tenable. We need to make the transition towards the circular economy, an economic paradigm which respects the boundaries of our planet. The circular economy adopts a take-make-use-reuse approach, which aims to decouple economic growth from the consumption of finite resources. This circular paradigm came about several decades ago and sounds hopefull. Nevertheless, it has been far from being mainstream as the transition towards this circular paradigm is surrounded by barriers, challenges, and complexities. In other words, this transition is halted due to a so-called linear lock-in. This graduation project aims to circumvent this linear lock-in for the purpose of mainstreaming circular economy principles. It does this by adopting the Design Thinking methodology, thé design approach to tackle untenable social, environmental and political problems for which no unambiguous solutions can be found (Dorst, 2015). This project focusses on the consumer appliances segment, praised by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2013) as the ‘sweet-spot’ segment for circularity, and the European Commission has made the sector an important point on their agenda, as its one of the fastest growing waste streams in the EU (EC, 2020). An iterative research and design approach led to a platform concept solution which delivers value to the consumers, product brands and integrates circular economy strategies. At the core of this opportunity is digital product-to-user registration. The design is communicated via manifesting its features and a service design blueprint. The thesis is concluded with a roadmap for implementation and recommendations for further development.

circular economy
circular business model
CBM
circular economy transition
linear economy
linear lock-in
design thinking
product registration
digital platform solution
twings

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:79195b2c-b2ee-4844-bbaf-399b656bbc78

Student theses

master thesis

© 2021 Bootsy Akkerman