Most frameworks for dealing with the complexity of designing for the circular economy have limitations in terms of correlating different domains of knowledge, correlating highly complex design strategies, and facilitating the process of design strategies’ discovery and development. This paper discusses how managers and designers can create products that can be circulated for several life cycles by considering five different circular objectives (i.e., maintenance/longevity, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture and/or recycling). To achieve one or more of these objectives, multiple design strategies can be used at various phases of each product life cycle and throughout the product’s lifetime. A literature review is used in this article to evaluate how circular objectives and design strategies are classified in terms of relevance, product life cycle phases, and product life cycles. The three classifications are merged to create a novel conceptual framework, which is then tested through the use of four circular case studies to map out life cycles, circular objectives, and design strategies. The framework may help managers and designers better understand how their businesses and products interact along the supply chain, allowing them to establish more effective product lifetime plans.

.This chapter introduces the concept of Sustainable Product-Service System (S.PSS). S.PSS is an offer model providing an integrated mix of products and services that are together able to fulfil a particular customer/user demand (to deliver a “unit of satisfaction”), based on innovative interactions between the stakeholders of the value production system (satisfaction system), where the ownership of the product/s and/or the life cycle services costs/responsibilities remain with the provider/s, so that the same provider/s continuously seek/s environmentally and/or socio-ethically beneficial new solutions, with economic benefits. Next it discusses the potentional environmental, socio-ethical and economical benefits of S.PSS.

We argued in previous chapters that Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) generation is a promising approach towards sustainable energy for All.

In the previous chapter, we introduced that Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) is the most promising model to bring sustainable energy to All.

The world is facing a strong evolution due to the advancement of information and communication technologies that set the knowledge technologies at the base of productivity, competition and power.

The book is one of the outcomes of LeNSes, the Learning Network on Sustainable energy system, a project funded by the ACP-EU Co-operation Programme in Higher Education (EDULINK II), for curricula development and teaching diffusion in worldwide design higher education institutions, on design for sustainability focused on Sustainable Product-Service System (S.PSS) applied to Distributed Renewable Energies (DRE). [...]

We understood in the previous chapters that Sustainable Product-Service Systems (S.PSS) applied to Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) represents a win-win opportunity to extend the access to sustainable energy to All.

A key contemporary query is the following: within the current social, environmental and economic crisis, which are the opportunities for innovate towards sustainability? Do we know any offer/business model capable of creating (new) value, decoupling it from material and energy consumption? In other words, is there any alternative to significantly reduce the environmental impact of traditional production/consumption systems?.

Historically, the reaction of humankind to environmental degradation, especially since the second half of the last century, has moved from an end-of-pipe approach to actions increasingly aimed at prevention.

This chapter illustrates two practical applications of the SD4SEA design approach and tools, describing how they have been used by companies, practitioners and academics in different countries as part of the LeNSes project.

The method developed within the LeNSes project is called Method for System Design for Sustainable Energy for All (MSD4SEA).

We recognise that the dominant socio-economic development models in industrialised contexts are unsustainable. The pressure of human beings on the environment has profoundly modified natural systems, and today the planet is reaching its limits in the capacity of assimilating environmental effects caused by anthropic activities. In the last few decades the reaction of humankind to sustainability problems has produced a series of approaches that has gone from relying upon end-of-pipe solutions to cleaner production and product eco-design strategies. However, although these types of interventions are fundamental and necessary, the improvements they can provide are usually more than offset by the pace and scale of population growth and increasing consumption levels. For these reasons it is clear that we must not only address products, production processes and provision of services but we must also address the patterns of consumption, lifestyles, and the institutions that underpin them and how all of these must be addressed simultaneously, if we intend to make the transformation to sustainable societal processes. [...]