Bio-based plastics in durable applications: The future of sustainable product design? A design review

This design review evaluates the use of bio-based plastics in durable consumer products. The main question is: how does the use of bio-based plastics influence the product’s design, functionality, marketing & communication, and sustainability? Although higher material prices would lead one to expect that higher value applications would be...

Design competencies for a circular economy

Limited research has been done on design competencies for a circular economy in practice. Yet, an overview of design competencies for a circular economy would be useful to understand which topics should be emphasized in both education and practice. This paper focuses on deriving circular economy competencies for product designers working in...

The role of product designers in the transition towards the circular economy: A reality check

This paper examines the role of product designers in the transition towards the circular economy. Both scientific and grey literature show remarkable optimism when it comes to role strategic and coordinating role designers could play in this transition process. However, there has been little examination of the actual role and influence designers...

Developments and challenges in design for sustainability of electronics

Sustainability of electronic products until recently mainly focused on improving the energy efficiency. Recently, resource efficiency has become of growing importance. Due to the use of relatively small amounts of many valuable and scarce materials, often intimately mixed, the design of electronic products deserves specific attention. From a...