Products that go round: exploring product life extension through design
Introduction
Product lifespans in industrialized societies have steadily declined over the past decade, leading to an increased throughput of materials in society and more waste (Huisman et al., 2012). As a result, the environmental impacts of materials production and processing are rapidly becoming critical (Allwood et al., 2011). For product designers, three strategies for addressing these problems are material efficiency, product life extension and product recycling (ibid.). Material efficiency, designing products with less material, is dealt with in most design projects as it brings down costs and is considered good business practice. Product life extension (through longer product life, refurbishment and remanufacturing) and product recycling are however not routinely dealt with in most design practices (Hatcher et al., 2011). Hatcher et al. (2011), in their comprehensive review of design for remanufacture literature, conclude that although the relevance of design for remanufacture (DfRem) research has increased in recent years, this does not yet translate into an increase in OEM remanufacturing activity, nor in design for remanufacture efforts by designers and engineers.
Given the rapidly changing market conditions this might however change in the near future. For instance, the prices of most raw materials have increased significantly due to growing demand from emerging economies (Rosenau-Tornow et al., 2009). For several materials supply disruptions were reported, causing concerns about long-term supply security (Erdmann and Graedel, 2011). A few forward-looking thinkers even claim a paradigm shift has occurred with increasing competition and rising prices of ever-scarcer resources now being the new norm (Grantham, 2012). In such volatile markets, retaining value through careful management of a product's end-of-life makes sense. Recent developments in legislation and regulation such as (ongoing) revisions of the WEEE and EcoDesign directives in the EU and the EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) in the USA stress the importance of design for end-of-life, product longevity and life cycle extension.
The aim of this paper is to explore how product design can more proactively address product life extension (through longer product life, refurbishment and remanufacturing) and product recycling. In order to do so, it is necessary to first develop an understanding of the extent to which product lifespans have been declining, and to assess whether these shorter lifespans are indeed causing overall negative environmental impacts. This assessment will provide starting points for the development of product life scenarios in Section 7. Based on these, a research agenda for the further development of product life extension and recycling is outlined in Section 8. The focus in this paper is on energy using products as this is one of the best-documented product categories (a result of legislation like the WEEE directive). It is also the product category where most research on product life extension was done. This paper will add to the body of knowledge by presenting novel data on product lifespans, and considering the implications of this data and the resulting product life scenarios for product design.
Section snippets
Theoretical framework and definitions
According to Stahel (1998: p 29), the key to product life extension “lies in the transformation of the actual linear production-focused industrial economy into a utilization-focused service economy operating in loops”. This is a concise summary of the concept of a circular economy that is at the basis of much current design thinking. McDonough and Braungart, 2002, McDonough and Braungart, 2013 for instance talk about “waste equals food” and “nutrient management” in their cradle-to-cradle design
Shorter product lifespans
Central to product life extension is the concept of a product's lifespan, which is defined in this paper as the period from product acquisition to discarding of the product by the final owner (Murakami et al., 2010). It is also referred to as a product's domestic service lifespan. The period includes any repair, refurbishment or remanufacturing, as well as periods of storage when the product is no longer in use (also called ‘dead storage’ or ‘hibernation’).
Reliable data on product lifespans is
Determining the optimal product lifespan: methodology
The question is to what extent decreasing product lifespans are problematic from a sustainability perspective. According to Allwood et al. (2011) and Nes and Cramer (2006), products with high use energy compared to embedded energy should be replaced frequently, provided a significantly more energy efficient alternative is available. Refrigerators, for instance, are always ‘on’ and some researchers have calculated that early replacement can be an eco-effective strategy (Kim et al., 2006). The
Case studies: refrigerator and laptop
Following the steps in Section 4, the results of the life cycle optimization modelling are shown for a domestic refrigerator–freezer and a laptop.
Findings from the case studies
While the energy consumption of laptops and refrigerators has decreased substantially over time, so has their lifespan. The overall effect is negative, for it results in premature replacements where the environmental impacts of production have not been fully offset by the energy efficiency improvements in newer models. The results suggest that fridge–freezers and laptops bought in 2011 should be used for longer than their current median lifespans of approximately 14 and 4 years respectively.
Design strategies for product life extension
The analysis outlined in the previous sections is an example of how design researchers could start mapping product life scenarios. It is possible that the optimal product life requires a shortening of the product lifespan, however, in the case of the fridge and the laptop, product life extension was found to be the most eco-efficient scenario. Using the theoretical framework in Table 1, a range of possible design strategies for product life extension and product recycling was mapped (Table 4).
Implications for design research
In order to design products that fit within a circular economy (“circular products”), it is important to first of all understand how to optimize product lifespan from a sustainability perspective without compromising the product's economic viability. The main challenge for design research therefore is to determine when to apply which product life extension strategy. The waste management hierarchy is of limited guidance, as the previous section showed. Different products require different
Conclusion
This research sets out to determine the optimal product lifespans of refrigerators and laptops, with the aim to understand whether product life extension and/or product recycling is the preferred strategy from a sustainability perspective, and to explore what options there are to address these through design. The inquiry was triggered by recent research that demonstrates how product lifespans in the Netherlands have declined (sometimes by more than 10%) between 2000 and 2005, causing
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Innovation-Oriented Research Program ‘Integrated Product Creation and Realization (IOP IPCR)’ of the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation.
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