Developing circular building components: Between ideal and feasible

Creating a circular economy within the built environment plays a crucial role in society’s pursuit to become more sustainable. A building consists of building components, such as a kitchen, façade and roof. By replacing building components with more circular ones during new construction, maintenance and renovation, we can gradually make...

Polyhydroxyalkanoate production by municipal waste activated sludge: Tackling scaling-up process challenges

Microbes are the gears that sustain all forms of life in planet Earth and are expected to become key players in the transition towards a more sustainable society. In this thesis, microbes from sewage sludge are used for the production of polyhydroxyalkanoates, biodegradable polymers that have the potential to replace<br/>many of the petroleum...

Strategic design for remanufacturing

BoorsmaRemanufacturing is one of the product recovery approaches in a circular economy. In the remanufacturing production process, used products are returned to their original product specifications. When compared to original manufacturing, remanufacturing results in lower raw material consumption and reduces carbon emissions. Despite having...

From surgical waste to medical products

Hospital waste has a major impact on the environment. The worldwide growth of hospital waste is the result of the growing world population and the increase in use of disposables. A circular healthcare economy may contribute to the reduction of hospital waste. The circular economy is a system in which waste is prevented and where waste is reused....

Circular Strategies Enabled by the Internet of Things: Opportunities, Implementation Challenges, and Environmental Impact

The concept of a ‘Circular Economy’ (CE) has been gaining traction in business, policy, and academia. It envisions an economy powered by renewable energy in which the value of products and materials are preserved for as long as possible. ‘Design for Circular Economy’ is emerging as a research field as well as a branch of sustainable design...

Collaboration in Circular Oriented Innovation: Why, How and What?

Our society faces many global sustainability challenges. Many of these challenges we have either created or exacerbated by not thinking about how the scale of our actions impacts the planet. We have however entered the Anthropocene, an epoch in time whereby human activity is now the dominant force upon the planet’s climate and environment. It is...

Re-use of Building Products in the Netherlands: he development of a metabolism based assessment approach

This research departs from the desire to understand the practice of reuse of building products from a systemic standpoint, representing a network of multiple factors influencing the process of reusing. Through the Industrial Ecology theoretical framework, these relations are dynamic and contextually bounded defining the commercial feasibility of...

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...