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The current enthusiasm for the circular economy (CE) offers a unique opportunity to advance the impact of research on sustainability transitions. Diverse interpretations of CE by scholars, however, produce partly opposing assessments of its potential benefits, which can hinder progress. Here, we synthesize policy-relevant lessons and research directions for a sustainable CE and identify three narratives—optimist, reformist, and skeptical—that underpin the ambiguity in CE assessments. Based on 54 key CE scholars’ insights, we identify three research needs: the articulation and discussion of ontologically distinct CE narratives; bridging of technical, managerial, socio-economic, environmental, and political CE perspectives; and critical assessment of opportunities and limits of CE science–policy interactions. Our findings offer practical guidance for scholars to engage reflexively with the rapid expansion of CE knowledge, identify and pursue high-impact research directions, and communicate more effectively with practitioners and policymakers.

The current enthusiasm for circular economy (CE) offers a unique opportunity to advance the impact of research on sustainability transitions. Diverse interpretations of CE by scholars, however, produce partly opposing assessments of its potential benefits, which can hinder progress. Here, we synthesize policy-relevant lessons and research directions for a sustainable CE and identify three narratives – optimist, reformist and skeptical – that underpin the ambiguity in CE assessments. Based on 54 key CE scholars’ insights, we identify three research needs: the articulation and discussion of ontologically distinct CE narratives; bridging of technical, managerial, socio-economic, environmental and political CE perspectives; and critical assessment of opportunities and limits of CE science-policy interactions. Our findings offer practical guidance for scholars to engage reflexively with the rapid expansion of CE knowledge, identify and pursue high-impact research directions, and communicate more effectively with practitioners and policymakers.

This stream of the special volume addresses advances being made towards, and challenges for sustainable production and consumption. The article presents a variety of papers that document leading examples of recent developments in understanding and knowledge, before assessing gaps within current progress and posing questions and challenges for future research and practice. An overview framework is constructed to categorise the papers, and to illustrate key actors and factors for sustainable production and consumption. The themes covered include specific examples of progress in areas such as sustainable production, covering topics such as eco-efficiency, waste management and the use of renewable resources, as well as sustainable consumption and the role of consumers. Supporting actions and themes are included, showing recent advances in design and innovation for sustainability and the role of assessment and benchmarking. Finally, contributions that consider how to connect production with consumption, and upscaling and bridging, are examined. The article concludes by proposing that continued progress is reliant on further connecting production and consumption, and ensuring that consumer and user perspectives are integrated into innovation and design processes so as to overcome hindering factors such as rebound effects. A call for further progress is issued on what needs to be done to go beyond ‘good examples’ and on what actions and strategies are able to share and spread success stories of sustainable production and consumptions to different contexts and settings.

Increased focus in research on the environmental consequences of behaviour and product usage the last decade has resulted in a number of different design strategies. The strategies are meant to stimulate desired behavioural patterns or to avoid undesired ones. Although this provides understanding of how behaviour may be changed, there has been limited discussion about when and in which context to apply the different strategies. This paper aims to investigate when different strategies are likely to have the intended effect, depending on how they divide the control between the user and the product. Factors affecting behaviour, identified by social psychology, are used as a framework for this investigation. The result is a number of guidelines that are meant to help designers make informed decisions about which behaviour changing strategies to apply.

Many life cycle assessment studies document that the most resource demanding phase during the clothing life cycle is the use period. This paper discusses how to reduce the environmental impacts of clothing use by improved design. Complete systems thinking is required, evaluating contributions by all the actors in the clothes’ life cycle chain. The use phase should not merely be the consumers’ responsibility. Instead, this should be shared and taken into account already in the design and production phase. The improved design could lead to better quality products that also promote more sustainable use, for example by having longer use periods and broader use areas. The design should meet social challenges such as fear of stigmatisation due to using the same clothes several days in a row, or profuse anxiety of body odours, which both may lead to redundant laundering. Some design solutions may involve just providing information, putting the user in control, other design directions may focus on making undesirable behaviour impossible. The analysis is based on a quantitative consumer survey and qualitative interviews of a strategic selection of households in order to investigate the motives behind clothing disposal, acquisition practices and maintenance habits. From these households, all clothing that would have been disposed has been collected and subsequently analysed in a textile laboratory. This way, information on both the social and technical aspects of disposal has been obtained.

Implementing sustainability in business is steadily gaining more attention. A growing number of companies currently work on the implementation of sustainable criteria in the design related departments and their design processes. Although theory and methods are available, practice shows that this integration process of sustainability criteria is not straightforward. In this paper, different cases from practice are described based on a study of five Flemish and three Dutch firms that are broadening their (sometimes already extensive) experience on this implementation process. The emphasis of this paper is put on influential factors such as the presence of an implementation process of sustainability criteria inside a firm’s product development department, with a focus on the need for a sustainability vision and strategy, resistance against sustainability and the link between internal communication and resistance. Our data suggest that a clear vision, mission, strategy and planning of the implementation process of sustainability criteria are needed, but not necessarily from the beginning of the process. Apart from that, factors of resistance appear to evolve throughout the implementation process that vary in nature (organizational versus personal) and content. Lastly, three types of communication are suggested that need to be considered and applied in order to involve, support and inform employees in order to positively progress into the direction of more sustainable products and processes.

Design for sustainable behaviour implies applying design strategies that have been proposed to realize sustainable products that take into account human behavior, thereby minimizing user-related environmental losses. In addition, the application of linked-benefit strategies has been suggested to ensure the design of commercially interesting products, linking sustainability benefits to financial, functionality, aesthetical or convenience benefits. However, very few, if any, case studies have been reported on that aim to use both design strategies in one particular product design. Since a methodology for doing so is lacking, this paper, based on the development of a desk lamp, suggests, discusses, and evaluates possible directions for a hands-on approach. The resulting prototype is discussed, and a model is suggested for further testing.

In recent years, the implementation of sustainability into the curricula of engineering has become increasingly important. This paper focuses on the experiences of integrating sustainability in Design Engineering education in the academic bachelor programs at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, at the University College of West-Flanders in Belgium, and at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The different approaches are described and discussed. This paper aims to share insights and lessons learned in how to accomplish true integration of sustainability in bachelor course curricula of Industrial Design Engineering., Design Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering

The traditional purpose of packaging for consumer electronics (CE) products was to get them in one piece from the factory to the consumers home. It was purely focused on the physical distribution. In that time, buying a CE product could be considered a major family investment. However, times have changed, as nowadays a trend of commoditization can be observed in the market of consumer electronics products. Commoditization is the transformation of a noncommodity product into a commodity. A commodity is a product where consumers perceive no difference between the offerings of different suppliers or manufacturers, other than price. Strictly speaking, CE products may currently not be a true commodity; however the term commoditization can be said to describe a process in which CE goods become more and more like daily supermarket purchases. The term commoditization is widely used in literature. A commoditized product is characterized by low-margins, high competition and low importance of brands. This is an unfavorable situation for OEMs, as non-commodity products have higher margins. To be a non-commodity, products need to have some characteristics that make them stand out. This can apply to an entire product category or just specific brands. This development has resulted in two changes in packaging design. For the commoditized goods the packaging has become more important as the silent salesman, just like Fast Moving Consumer Goods. For non-commoditized goods packaging has become more important in communicating the brand experience, hence also moving away from the original focus on protection during physical distribution. This paper describes part of a larger PhD project on sustainable packaging for durable goods, which focused strongly on transport optimization through volume minimization. This paper will analyze the process of commoditization, the coinciding changes in the retailing of CE products, and the resulting changes in packaging functionality. To describe the c, Industrial Design Engineering

From the perspective of a multinational corporation producing durable consumer goods sustainable packaging is packaging that fulfils the right functionalities in the most efficient way. In order to achieve this, an integral design process is required. Such an integral approach to the design of packaging for CE goods would imply a process that takes into account all requirements, whether they are technical, financial, environmental or psychological in nature, and that also incorporates the relationship between the packed product and the packaging. In this paper this approach will be defined as packaging design engineering. In business reality however, a split between packaging design and packaging engineering can be observed. Packaging engineering has to do with protection, and fulfilling the distribution functions. It is about the 3-D design, which is also referred to as structural packaging design. This is the expertise typically offered by packaging suppliers. Packaging design on the other hand, has to do with the appearance of the packaging and is related to the marketing functions. Oftentimes packaging design will be limited to 2-D graphical aspects. It is typically the part of the total packaging concept that is supplied by external packaging design agencies. The tools and methods of packaging engineering and packaging design differ substantially. This is a result of the fact that packaging engineering deals with materials and mechanical behavior, while packaging design deals with people. In practice, one can observe that for a given product either the design aspects or the engineering aspects take preference, while the other receives less attention. When striving for optimal packagingeither from an economical or from an environmental perspectivethese two aspects will have to be balanced. This paper will analyze the existing approaches in both packaging engineering and packaging design, and assess their strengths and weaknesses. The data used originates from sc, Industrial Design Engineering

Design for Sustainability has traditionally focused strongly on green fulfilment of a given function, i.e. the process after a design brief has been formulated. The part of the New Product Development process that comes before the formulation of the design brief, is usually referred to as the Fuzzy Front End. Here, the function is determined that the new product should fulfil. From a sustainability perspective this phase is interesting as it may yield sustainable functions, resulting in products that are sustainable because they solve or reduce an external environmental problem. To achieve this, sustainability aspects need to be incorporated in existing tools and methods of the Fuzzy Front End. This paper discusses the potential for sustainable-function products and the lack of academic attention this type of innovation has received until now. It also discusses the potential adaptations of tools and methods., Design Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering

Traditionally packaging design-for-sustainability (DfS) strongly focuses on resource conservation and material recycling. The type and amount of materials used has been the driver in design. For consumer electronics (CE) products this weight-based approach is too limited; a volume-based approach is needed. As this paper will show, from an environmental perspective (as well as from an economical perspective) transportation of goods from factories to the final retail outlets is about twice as important as the materials used in the packaging. Due to the low density of packed CE goods volume is the limiting factor in determining the number of products per shipment, as will be demonstrated using data from approximately 100 products. Hence design for volume reduction is an approach of major importance in packaging design for sustainability., Industrial Design Engineering

Two major changes are currently taking place in the world of Consumer Electronics. They are, first, the relocation of production to low-wage countries, in particularly China. This results in longer distribution distances, which lead to a higher relative importance of this phase in the entire life cycle. To make this phase as efficient as possible, products should be packed as volume efficient as possible, which means small boxes. Secondly, retail formats for CE products change into large budget-oriented stores selling products in the box. Here the packaging has to sell the product, which calls for bigger, shinier boxes. Obviously the combination of these developments leads to design conflicts. This paper addresses how to manage this design challenge in such a way that the environmental impact of the packaging does not get unnecessarily high., Design Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering

Developments in the field of sustainable product design are manifold, which means that education in this field is rapidly evolving as well. In this paper, the continuously evolving portfolio of courses offered at Delft University of Technology’s Industrial Design Engineering faculty is systematically discussed, with a focus on content, course formats, assignments and lessons learned from course evaluations in recent years. It is concluded that in particular integration in existing contexts (academic and industrial) is of utmost importance., Design Engineering, Industrial Design Engineering