A circular design process: The Potential to Value Circle
Connecting potential to create value in a circular economy
E.M. Eikelenboom (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
Bas Flipsen – Mentor (TU Delft - Circular Product Design)
H.L. McQuillan – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Emerging Materials)
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Abstract
In this graduation project the design process: the Potential to Value Circle, for designing from a waste stream is presented. The Potential to Value Circle creates a structured way of working in which the potential of a waste stream is translated to value. Value is generated by combining the perspectives of material, stakeholders and context around a waste stream into a concept direction. Through this process, The Bin guides their clients to take the next steps in becoming part of a circular economy.
This project was done in collaboration with The Bin. The Bin is a startup in the circular economy. They help their clients to become part of a circular economy by creating circular concepts out of their waste streams and setting up a circular system around these concepts. These waste streams can be defined as products at their end-of-life or by-products from a production line.
Currently, the Bin bases its process on the circular frameworks the Value Hill (Achterberg et al., 2016), R9-list (Potting et al., 2017) and the Butterfly diagram (EllenMacArthur Foundation, 2019). These frameworks give the bin a high-level overview of circular value creation. However, they want to have a more step by step process that helps to turn waste streams into circular concepts. This was the essence of their request for this graduation project and resulted in the Potential to Value Circle.
The Potential to Value Circle approaches a waste stream from different perspectives, resulting in opportunities that get turned into a concept direction that uses the waste stream to move towards a circular economy. The Potential to Value Circle is built up in three phases, 1) Analysis, 2) Combining, and 3) Circular design goal. The first phase presents how an understanding of the elements around a waste stream can be created, by analysing material, stakeholders and context. Based on this, potentials are formulated. In phases 2 and 3, the potentials of phase 1 are combined, which allows translating the potentials of the waste stream into opportunities. With these opportunities, a concept direction is formulated that creates value. Three ways of applying the Potential to Value Circle are presented, on which the Workshop is elaborated further. The workshop shows how to work in three hours with the Potential to Value Circle to a circular design goal with the client.