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Testing the Robustness of Circularity Indicators: Empirical Insights from Workshops on an Industrial Product

Part of: Responsible Design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Michael Saidani ,
François Cluzel ,
Yann Leroy  and
Bernard Yannou

Abstract

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Monitoring properly the circularity performance of technical products is a point of increasing importance. Yet, evaluating the circularity potential of products during (re)design and development phases is a challenging task. In this study, several C-indicators are experienced by doctoral students and industrialists through two workshops on a real-world industrial product. The values obtained for each indicator are collected and analyzed: as all participant are working on the same technical product with the same dataset, the circularity scores calculated are compared to discuss the reliability and the uncertainty related to these indicators. These new empirical insights are put in parallel with the existing critical analyses of C-indicators from literature. As a result, future research directions on circularity indicators are advanced and discussed, including: the integration of uncertainty considerations into the assessment methodology of circularity indicators; the uptake by industry of such indicators during product design and development; the link between circularity and sustainability scores.

Keywords

Circular economyCircularity indicatorsDesign for X (DfX)Case studyWorkshop
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , July 2019 , pp. 3401 - 3410
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019

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