A circular economy for medical devices; barriers and opportunities for laparoscopic instruments

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...

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....

Drivers and Barriers to the Circular Economy Transition: The Case of Recycled Plastics in the Automotive Sector in the European Union

The circular economy aims to decouple growth from environmental impacts by optimizing resource use, minimizing waste and pollution. The European Union (EU) has the ambition to lead a circular economy transition on a global level. Realizing the transition is complex, because it requires substantial and interconnected changes in the current...

Digital Government and the Circular Economy: Towards an Analytical Framework

Circular economy is high on the political agenda, with governments at all levels setting ambitious goals to move away from traditional linear production models, where goods are used and disposed as waste, towards a future with less use of virgin raw materials, and where valuable materials at a product end-of-life are returned as raw materials or...

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...

A Life Cycle Assessment of reprocessing face masks during the Covid-19 pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic led to threatening shortages in healthcare of medical products such as face masks. Due to this major impact on our healthcare society an initiative was conducted between March and July 2020 for reprocessing of face masks from 19 different hospitals. This exceptional opportunity was used to study the costs impact and the...

Industrial Symbiosis: Towards a design process for eco-industrial clusters by integrating Circular Economy and Industrial Ecology perspectives

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is a collective approach to competitive advantage in which separate industries create a cooperative network to exchange materials, energy, water and/or by-products. By addressing issues related to resource depletion, waste management and pollution, IS plays an important role in the transition towards sustainable...

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 Economy in the building sector: Three cases and a collaboration tool

The Circular Economy (CE) gained significant traction in business and academia. While in the building sector issues around energy efficiency are being widely explored, CE is still a relatively new topic. This article reports on three CE pilots in the Dutch building sector and develops a collaboration tool for developing and operating circular...

The Circular Economy: A new sustainability paradigm?

While the terms Circular Economy and sustainability are increasingly gaining traction with academia, industry, and policymakers, the similarities and differences between both concepts remain ambiguous. The relationship between the concepts is not made explicit in literature, which is blurring their conceptual contours and constrains the...

Design for Change and Circularity: Accommodating Circular Material & Product Flows in Construction

Circular building concepts, as proposed within e.g. Circular Economy and Cradle-to-Cradle frameworks, imply radical changes for the construction sector. Cradle-to-Cradle® in particular has put forward the idea of buildings as material banks, radically altering the way material flows need to be managed. The notion of material banks (temporary...

Welcome to The Green Village

A sustainable world can only be achieved by an open collaboration between science, business and the public. That is why we create the Green Village: an innovative, lively, interactive and challenging environment where entrepreneurs, innovators, companies, artists, teachers and visitors can meet, work and play to develop, apply and experience...