Metabolic's Circular System Design Process

Abstract

The current ‘take, make, waste’ linear economy has caused many ecological and social problems; that’s why the circular economy aims to close the loop so businesses can thrive while natural resources sustain and regenerate. Metabolic, a sustainability consultancy that helps clients transition towards the circular economy, recognizes that a circular product can only exist within a properly functioning circular system. Therefore, they adopt system thinking, a thinking skill that perceives parts of a more extensive system as intertwined components rather than independent entities (da Costa Junior et al. 2019), with science-based analysis in their project work.
However, collaborations between stakeholders are essential to achieve systemic changes since they might all hold different values, interests, and world views on a system. Metabolic’s current ‘science-based system thinking’ methods can be improved by engaging and building upon those collaborations. Systemic design provides frameworks and methods to create a shared understanding that mutual agreement can emerge among actions to be taken. Besides, designers’ ability and methods to synthesize, visualize, and create can complement system thinking in co-creating circular economy solutions among stakeholders. Therefore, this graduation project explores how systemic design and other design methods could help improve Metabolic’s circular system design process.
The outcome of this project is a Circular system design process with multiple sessions, activities, and tools developed for Metabolic to apply in their future projects. Additionally, a guidebook (Ch. 5) was written for Metabolic members to learn and get the essential preparation for adopting the tools.