CIRCO: Creating Business Through Circular Product Design

The Challenge

In our current linear "take - make - waste" pattern, the everyday products that we use are contributing to the quick depletion of the world's natural resources, resulting in price volatility and unsustainable, future growth. Entrepreneurs must find ways to preserve value throughout their supply chains, design products with longer lifespans and take advantage of the possibilities of circular design. Products need to be redesigned so that they can be reused, remanufactured, and recycled with a goal of reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills or incinerators.

The Approach

Product design is the engine with which we can accelerate the transition towards a circular economy. Creating innovative products and exploring new ways to deliver services is a means for which circular design can come to life. Designers are the change agents for circular business within their organisations and play a key role in making the circular economy, a priority in future strategies.

Throughout a series of 3 day-long workshops, businesses, designers, and students join forces to create a roadmap to develop business through circular design. The workshop participants are taken on a journey through three stages, initiate, ideate, and implement. For designers there is a separate day long class in which they take the first steps towards redesigning a product of their choosing in a circular manner. At the end of the business track participants leave with a clear circular business proposition, a finalized feasibility check and a roadmap to implementation.

What's Next?

Through shared knowledge and inspiration, key partnerships are formed to develop new products, services, and business models based on concrete challenges. By providing a safe and creative environment in which businesses and designers can apply circular business strategies to current, real life cases, they can take the first steps in implementing their circular business ideas.

Are you interested in learning more about the CIRCO framework or signing up for an upcoming workshop?

[cta link="http://www.circle-economy.com/events/circo-workshop-creating-buiness-through-circular-product-design/"]Register today![/cta]