Aesthetic durability & Repair

Each year, over 50 million tonnes of electronic waste is generated globally, with the Netherlands averaging more than 20 kg per capita (Compendium voor de Leefomgeving, 2023). The shift from a linear to a circular economy is crucial in addressing this issue, emphasizing the importance of durability and repairability in product design....

TRACK Core: Towards a world-friendly asset tracker

2022 SODAQ, manufacturer of the general purpose asset tracker: TRACK, committed itself to take environmental and social responsibility and got rebranded as a ‘World-friendly IoT’ company. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for the current TRACK product, performed by an external company, proved that decreasing the impact of the enclosure might provide...

Assessing environmental sustainability of digital health devices at a product and functional level: A smart pillbox case study

This study explores the environmental sustainability of digital health devices, specifically smart pillboxes, which are designed to help patients manage their medication, improve their health, and reduce medication non-adherence. The use of such devices has increased electronic and plastic waste and has resulted in a higher demand for critical...

Circular IoT: Longer lasting wireless sensor nodes for industrial applications

With the ever increasing number of wirelessly operated connected devices, the environmental consequences that this trend brings about need to be considered. This project has been carried out to explore the possibilities for transitioning industrial IoT sensor nodes into the circular economy.<br/><br/>Wireless sensor nodes are battery powered...

Modularity in Lattice structures for Circular Product Design

The principles of repair and maintenance, reuse, and repurposing of products in a circular economy aim at further minimizing the environmental impact during the use of products before being processed for recycling. However, studies on lattice structures in various fields focus on mechanical characteristics, design, and manufacturing methods....

Design for repurpose towards a circular economy

Repurpose, the reuse of (parts of) obsolete products in new applications seems a promising strategy towards a circular economy because products can be (partly) reused without applying any energy consuming recycling process, which often results in a loss of material quality. As repurpose is a strategy to retain value, the process is applied after...

Towards Circular Bicycle Development: Introducing a tool for progression towards a circular bicycle development process

Accell Group is the European market leader in e-bikes and the European number two player in bicycle parts and accessories. Well- known bicycle brands in their portfolio include Babboe, Batavus, Ghost, Haibike, Koga, Lapierre, Raleigh, Sparta and Winora. Since Accell has decided to give sustainability a higher priority, there is a need to...

From linear to circular: An innovation strategy for MIscanthus based sustainable packaging

This thesis presents a circular innovation strategy for Miscanthus based packaging. In the wold, more and more plastic packaging is being used. A large part of the used plastics is single-use plastic packaging that is only used for a couple of minutes and then discarded. The discarded plastic packaging stays in the environment for hundreds of...

Material Driven Design: Designing a product from residual Dyneema® production fibres.

This master’s thesis is a collaboration between DSM Dyneema and the Circular Design Lab, a part of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. DSM Dyneema is a business group within the large Dutch multinational DSM N.V. They looking into means of making their business practice more suited to a future in a...

The First Circular Product Design with Dyneema®

DSM Dyneema produces an extremely strong fibre called Dyneema® consisting of Ultra High Molecular weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE). The Dyneema® material has been trademarked by its manufacturer as The Greenest strength™. This claim is based on the non-toxic chemical nature of the material and its production, as well as on having the lowest carbon...

The Pioneer: The ultimate updatable robot vacuum cleaner

Today’s industry relies on the take-make-dispose approach of the linear economic model. Our linear consumption and production patterns are depleting our planet’s resources, polluting our environment and changing our climate. As a proposed solution to this problem, a circular economic model is designed to reduce the flow of non-renewable energy...

The Insider system: A case study in circular product design for the backpack industry

The apparel industry is the second most polluting industry in the world, but the products they produce are used highly inefficiently. For every bag that is used on a daily basis, three bags are stored away in a closet. The Insider system is a product-service system that provides its users with the right bag on-demand. By making any bag you might...

Circular light.touch.matters

The purpose of the this Master thesis is to explore and introduce new sustainability design opportunities inside the EU founded project light.touch.matters. The LTM project is a pioneering project on new flexible smart materials, where the product becomes the interface. The attempt has been made to steer away from the traditional sustainability...