Why Circular Business Models Fail And What To Do About It: A Preliminary Framework And Lessons Learned From A Case In The European Union (Eu)

The circular economy aims to decouple economic growth from negative environmental impacts. To achieve this goal, circular economy concepts and policies must be implemented in practice by organizations through new circular business models. However, organizations often fail to implement circular business models on the market at scale. This is a...

Circular Design of Composite Products: A Preliminary Framework Based on Insights from Literature and Industry

Composite materials are an attractive material choice as they enable lightweight, low maintenance products with a long lifespan. But closing the loop for these materials in a Circular Economy (CE) is challenging, especially for thermoset composites. In a CE, products should be designed for minimal impact while preserving their environmental and...

Surfboard as a Service: a novel kitesurfing experience: Designing a Product-as-a-Service model for Appletree Surfboards

This report describes the process of the graduation project: ‘Surfboard as a Service: a novel kitesurfing experience’, which was carried out from February to September 2019. The assignment of the project is to design a custom Product-as-a-Service (PaaS) concept for Appletree Surfboards, which: reduces environmental impact, benefits the company...

Design for Recycling of Electronic Products: How to bridge the gap between design methods and recycling practices

The topic of this thesis is design for recycling (DfR) of electronic products. More than ever before, electronic products are intruding into our everyday life, both in the household and in industry, resulting in increasing numbers of electronic products ending up in waste streams (also known as electronic waste, or e-waste). Electronic products...

Circular Rollout: Bridging the design-implementation gap in circular economy

<b>Circular Economy<br/></b>Exponential growth in human activity has caused exponential changes in Earth system variables, like greenhouse gas emissions and global temperature. Human influence on the planet has reached far beyond safe parameters and could lead to disastrous consequences for large parts of the world. This is attributed to the...

Application of 3D printing in Repair

Repair was once a common act. With increased product diversity and complexity, a scarcity and obsolescence of spare parts is making repair increasingly difficult and economically unviable. The result is an accelerated turnover of manufactured goods, which are more often replaced than repaired. As products are discarded, embedded materials and...

Greentom Nova: the next sustainable child buggy

The goal of this project is to develop a concept for the next generation of Greentom products that is more sustainable than their current product line by applying Circular Economy. The result will be a child buggy, which is optimised to be produced, assembled, re-used, repaired, refurbished and recycled in Europe by Greentom. In other words: can...