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Tag: product design

Why Product Repair is so Important (And How We Can Make It Easier)

Why Product Repair is so Important
(And How We Can Make It Easier)

Product Repair is Planet Repair


Every time a new product is made it has an impact.


Products don’t just appear out of thin air. (How cool would it be if they did!?)

Unfortunately, every time a new product is made, resources get used up. Energy, land, raw materials, all that good stuff. Emissions get emitted, and usually, there are other environmental consequences involved too.

Factory chimneys pumping out clouds of emissions into the air next to water.

Almost always, when a product is produced, there are negative environmental consequences involved. So product repair is essential to ensure that every product we do produce, lasts as long as possible. Photo by Maxim Tolchinskiy on Unsplash.

Every time a new product is made it has an impact. So doesn’t it make sense to ensure every single product we produce lasts as long as possible? So we can maximise the value we get from all those resources we used to make the product?

Well of course it does! And one of the best ways we can do that is through product repair.

If we can focus on making products that are easy to repair, we can bring them back to life when they stop working. This is probably the best way to eradicate what we’ve started calling ‘single-life products’ for good. We are positive the planet would agree that this is a very good idea!

But unfortunately, a whole lot of products have been getting more and more difficult to repair in recent years. So what are we going to do about it?

The Issue: Product Repair Becoming Impractical

Particularly when it comes to modern electronics, products are not as easy to repair as they used to be.

Naturally, as technology has progressed, products have become more advanced. But the way manufacturers are choosing to design many of these products is not helping!

By doing things like glueing and soldering components together, using non-standard screws, and limiting access to spare parts, many brands are making products unnecessarily difficult and expensive to repair.

Person handing smartphone with smashed screen to other person above glass shop counter.

With components often glued and soldered together, repairing many modern devices has become unnecessarily difficult and expensive. Photo by PR MEDIA on Unsplash.

And as these devices become more and more integral in our everyday lives, it’s no surprise that we’re producing more electronic waste globally than ever before.

If we want to start reducing this waste — while still using all our lovely devices of course — then product repair is a big deal. And we mean practical, affordable, easily accessible product repair.

There are plenty of ways we can make this happen.

Solutions: How We Can Make Product Repair Easier

It’s encouraging to know that steps are already being taken around the world to boost product repair. But more still needs to be done!

So where are we right now, and what still needs to happen?

What’s Already Happening?

As you might expect, the steadily decreasing repairability of modern-day products has not gone unnoticed. So thankfully, some action is already being taken to make product repair more accessible.

Right to Repair

Last year, what are known as ‘right to repair’ regulations were introduced in the UK and the EU.

These regulations are basically designed to force manufacturers to make their products easier to repair. Currently, anyone making TVs, electronic displays, lighting, fridges, dishwashers, or washing machines and wash-dryers in the UK and the EU is affected by these new rules.

And under these new rules:

  • Manufacturers of these products will be legally obligated to make spare parts available to professional repairers and/or end-users. The parts must remain available for at least 7-10 years after a product has been discontinued.
  • Manufacturers must provide repair parts and manuals to professional repairers within 15 days of request.
  • Repairs must be possible using commonly available tools.

Man wearing black open suit jacket and white shirt holding card with half union jack and half EU flag up to the camera.

Just last year, right to repair laws were introduced in the UK and the EU. These laws are aimed at making certain products easier to repair.

Now we would say these new rules are absolutely a welcome move in the right direction. But you might have noticed that they don’t include anything about smartphones, tablets, or laptops. Or cookers or hobs or tumble dryers or microwaves or coffee machines or kettles or a whole load of other commonly used items!

There’s also no guarantee that replacement parts will be affordable, and many of the parts will only be made available to professional repairers.

So of course we welcome these new laws with open, grateful, repairable, circular arms. But more still needs to be done.

Repairability Index

Speaking of more being done, France has already taken an extra repair-friendly step.

Since the start of last year, they’ve been requiring anyone who manufactures smartphones, laptops, TVs, washing machines, and electric lawnmowers to give these products a repairability score.

According to this ‘repairability index’, each product must be rated on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the easiest to repair. Each manufacturer must score their products based on availability of technical documents to aid in repair, ease of disassembly, availability of spare parts, and a sub-criteria specific to the product category concerned.

This score — and all the information that went into calculating it — must be made available to consumers when they purchase any of these products.

The idea is that by forcing manufacturers to explicitly tell consumers how repairable their products are, they’ll be much more likely to actually make repairing them easier.

Everyone does love getting high scores on stuff right?

But how can we all start getting even higher scores when it comes to product repair?

What Still Needs to Happen to Make Product Repair Easier?

Progress is being made in the fight to make product repair more accessible, and it really is great to see. But we’re not quite there yet!

Here’s a few things we reckon would help us get over the line.

Expand Right to Repair


If we really want to make a difference, we need to implement strict right to repair laws for as many product categories as possible. In as many countries around the world as possible.


As we mentioned above, the right to repair laws introduced in the UK and the EU last year currently don’t apply to a whole bunch of widely used products. And they’re not super strict when it comes to making spare parts affordable, and easily available for everyone.

We’re sure this will happen soon enough, but if we really want to make a difference, we need to implement strict right to repair laws for as many product categories as possible. In as many countries around the world as possible.

We need laws that ensure spare parts are available to everyone, at an affordable price. And it should become standard for all products to come with clear and comprehensive instructions for repair.

If we can get to that stage, we’ll really be getting somewhere!

Repairability Scores Everywhere We Go!

One way to help us get to that stage is to take France’s repairability index and implement it far and wide. (Geographically and product-categorically) (That is a word we swear!)

If manufacturers everywhere are forced to tell us how repairable their products are, it surely won’t be long before they get their act together. (Repair their act even??)

Make Circular Design a Priority

And the best way any manufacturer can do that, is to embrace circular design.

Designing for circularity means carefully designing products with end-of-life management as the most important feature.

Circular products are designed from the very beginning to last as long as possible. Durability, repairability, upgradability, recyclability; these are all absolutely key features of any product designed using circular design principles.

Man using pen to draw sketches of a scooter on an open notebook with white pages.

If a product is designed using circular design principles, you can be sure it’ll be easily repairable! Photo by Kumpan Electric on Unsplash.

Basically, circular design is used to create products that remain valuable even after they’ve served their initial purpose. And this most definitely involves doing things like:

  • Simplifying products as much as possible.
  • Using as many standard components as possible.
  • Choosing modular designs when applicable.
  • Making products easy to disassemble.
  • Using recycle-friendly materials.
  • Making spare parts readily available.

If all manufacturers start doing this, product repair will never be an issue again. And we can wave goodbye to single-life products for good!

But until that happens, there’s still plenty we can do at home to make our products more repairable.

What Can You Do Now?


Repair needs to become the first thing we think about when a product stops working. We need to get excited about repair!


As things like right to repair, repairability scores, and circular design hopefully become more commonplace, products should gradually become easier to repair.

And as that happens, it’s also important that we as consumers embrace this change. Repair needs to become the first thing we think about when a product stops working. We need to get excited about repair! As excited as we get when we think about buying a new product! And as well as getting professionals to do the repairing, we need to welcome the challenge of repairing things ourselves.

We live in the age of the internet people! There are so many resources out there that can help us learn how to repair things ourselves! (Obviously the products need to be designed for repair in the first place, but as we’ve seen that is slowly happening).

Here’s a great list of info and resources that’ll help you get repairing in no time. One of the best ones is iFixit, which offers spare parts, tools, diagnostics, product repairability reviews, and even a Youtube channel with guides on how to repair all sorts of products.

With resources like these, and products that are actually designed for repair, we can all come together to make the products we use and love last.

No doubt, our planet will thank us.

This article was created by Adam Millett of Word Chameleon, in collaboration with Circular&Co.

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5 Ways to Eradicate Single-Use Products Using Circular Design

5 Ways to Eradicate Single-Life Products Using Circular Design

Time to Eradicate Single-Life Products for Good!

You heard it here first! YOLO should not apply to products! No product on this great green earth of ours should ever have to utter the phrase YOLO and believe it to be true! It’s time we find a way to eradicate single-life products for good! (Circular design just might be the way to do it!) (Nobody actually says YOLO anymore anyways, right?)

But wait. ‘Single-life products’ you say? What in the great green world are those? Well…

Single-life products are products that will inevitably end up as waste after they’ve served their initial purpose.

Any product — single-use or reusable — that is impractical to repair or recycle is a single-life product. We buy them, use them, and then we’re forced to chuck them in the rubbish because repairing or recycling them just isn’t a realistic option.

Maybe the product contains too many different materials so recycling it isn’t cost-effective. Maybe repairing it is basically impossible because all the components are glued together!
There are many possible reasons why a product ultimately becomes a single-life one.


Single-life products are products that will inevitably end up as waste after they’ve served their initial purpose.


Whatever those reasons are though, it will nearly always be possible to address them by designing the product differently in the first place. That is where circular design comes in.

Here’s how embracing circular design can help us eradicate single-life products for good.

1. First, Make Products That Last!

Okay so before we even get to the part where we design products that can live happily ever after through multiple lifetimes, it’s important to also place a little focus on that initial lifetime.

See the reason single-life products are such an issue is because basically they are resource-inefficient, and they create waste. Energy, raw materials, and emissions are all required to make each product, and then all of these resources are ultimately wasted when the product ends up in the rubbish.

Factory chimneys situated behind a forest pumping out clouds of emissions.

Every time we make a product, there are consequences for the environment. So we should always do everything we can to design products that last as long as possible. Photo by Daniel Moqvist on Unsplash.

Designing products that don’t end up in the rubbish is the ultimate goal here. But if we want to get the most value out of the many resources that go into making each product, it also makes sense to design products that last as long as possible to begin with.

As keeping products and materials in use is one of the core principles of the circular economy, designing for circularity is the perfect way to do this.

2. Design for Repair


In recent years, especially when it comes to modern electronics, having products repaired has been getting much more difficult. (And more expensive).


But when a product does finally call it quits, what then?

Well ideally you’ll be able to bring it back to life — or give it a second life — by getting it repaired. (Product repair is probably one of the most important weapons we have in the fight against single-life products!)

But in recent years, especially when it comes to modern electronics, having products repaired has been getting much more difficult. (And more expensive).

And yes, you’ve guessed it; many of the factors making products difficult or expensive to repair can be fixed by changing the design.

A really great example of this is what Fairphone are doing with their circular-friendly smartphones.

Fairphone is a perfect example of how circular design can be used to make products easier to repair.

While many smartphone manufacturers seem to be designing their products in a way that makes them unnecessarily difficult to repair (by glueing and soldering components together, using non-standard screws, and not making spare parts available), Fairphone is taking a very different approach.

They design their phones to be as repairable as possible. Each individual component can be easily replaced, all spare parts are available through the Fairphone website, and the phones can easily be disassembled using a standard screwdriver. None of the parts are glued or soldered together, which makes it possible for customers to actually repair the phones themselves. (Probably best to watch a few Youtube guides beforehand though!)

Eradicate single-life products you say? We see Fairphone as proof that careful circular design is already making that possible.

3. Upgradeable, Before Replaceable

Sometimes even when a product is still in full working order people will want to replace it!

Maybe they fancy something with a better camera, a brighter screen, or maybe they just want something new and shiny.

Now we’ll probably never be able to stop people wanting new and shiny things. But especially with tech products, if it’s an upgrade in functionality they’re looking for, there’s no reason they should have to buy a whole new product and ditch the old one.

If designed in a certain way (the circular way), it should be possible for customers to simply upgrade the particular part of a device they’re not happy with. If they fancy a better camera, can’t they just upgrade the camera instead of buying a whole new device? Or maybe they just want a bigger hard drive, or a brighter screen, or even a different kind of USB port?

Laptop with back panel removed, exposing all the individual components.

If only one or two of your device’s components are outdated, should there really be a need to upgrade the entire thing? Photo by Nikolai Chernichenko on Unsplash.

Throwing away an old device because one or two components are outdated makes no sense at all. And thankfully, some brands are already starting to agree.

A company called Framework will soon be launching a laptop where every component from the battery to the speakers to the headphone jack can easily be replaced and upgraded! And this is all down to the clever modular design of the laptop.

With a design like this, there’s no reason you couldn’t keep the same laptop for years and years. All you’d need to do is upgrade an individual part here and there when it stops working or becomes outdated. Meaning basically, your laptop would live forever! (And all because it’s designed with circularity in mind).

4. Design for Recycling


We don’t just mean designing products that can technically be recycled. We mean products should be designed so that recycling is easy and cost-effective.


But for the products that don’t live forever, making them easy to recycle is essential so that they don’t end up as waste. In fact, if you’re really following circular design principles, the ‘recyclability’ of a product should be one of the most important design factors you consider.

And we don’t just mean designing products that can technically be recycled. We mean products should be designed so that recycling is easy and cost-effective. This will usually mean doing things like carefully selecting recycle-friendly materials, making sure products are easy to disassemble, and always making the design as simple as possible.

A wonderful example of this in practice is a circularly-designed (yes circularly is a word!) running shoe Adidas recently released. See the majority of modern shoes are made from loads of different materials, and are usually stitched and glued and moulded together in all sorts of crazy ways. This can make them very difficult to recycle, and so, many of them end up being single-life products.

Adidas have designed a shoe that’s made from one single material. This makes it far far easier to recycle!

But Adidas has cleverly managed to use circular design to get around this issue. By designing a shoe from one single material, using no glue in the process, they have created a product that can easily be recycled into another at end of life. 100% of the raw materials can easily be used again to create another shoe.

Now if that’s not a perfect example of a product having a second life, we don’t know what is.

5. Make End-Of-Life Management The Most Important Feature

The way any product is designed is sure to have a huge impact on what happens to that product once we’re done with it. When you really think about it, it makes sense that getting the design right initially can solve so many problems down the line.

That’s why carefully designing our products to last, and to be repairable, upgradeable, and recyclable is so important.

But if we really want to eradicate single-life products for good, we can’t just settle for doing this some of the time. We need to make it the most important feature of all!

And that is what circular design is all about. Making sure every product is carefully designed with end-of-life management as its most important feature.

If we could convince every manufacturer on earth today to truly embrace circular design in everything they do, we’re positive; no product would ever have to say YOLO again.

This article was created by Adam Millett of Word Chameleon, in collaboration with Circular&Co.

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What Are Single-Life Products and Why Are They an Issue?

Single-Life Products and Why Are They becoming an Issue?

Disposable Gets a New Name


We reckon if you can’t turn a product into something new once you’re done with it, or prolong its life if it breaks, it ought to be considered disposable.


If you use a product 1000 times before throwing it in the rubbish, would you consider that product to be disposable?

Most people would probably answer that question with something like: “Disposable? No Way! What the heck are you talking about? That’s clearly a reusable product you’ve got there.”

And that assessment would be fair enough. Because in today’s world, the term ‘disposable’ has become exclusively associated with single-use products. But we think this limited use of the word disposable when describing products is an absolute travesty! See we reckon if you can’t turn a product into something new once you’re done with it, or prolong its life if it breaks, it ought to be considered disposable. No matter how many times you initially use it.

But since the term disposable already seems to be taken, we’ve come up with a term of our own. A better term. A fairer term. A term that encompasses all products — both single-use and reusable — that we feel are ultimately disposable.

And that term is: ‘Single-Life Products.’

But simply coining a term isn’t going to get us very far is it? Probably best that we elaborate.

What Are Single-Life Products?

Simply put, single-life products are any products that are likely to end up as waste once their initial purpose has been served. So this must mean any product that’s recyclable or repairable doesn’t count as a single-life product, right? Well, not necessarily.

See there are plenty of products out there that can technically be recycled, but for various reasons the recycling process for that product just isn’t practical enough for it to actually happen.

(This can often be the case with products made from multiple materials. Different materials need to be separated before they can be recycled, which of course takes time and effort. If this process isn’t cost-effective, it’s very unlikely the product will be recycled. So even when you throw a technically recyclable product in the recycling bin, it can still end up as waste).

There are also plenty of products out there that are of course repairable, if you’ve got the tools, parts, expertise, or money to do it! (Nearly half of folks in the UK surveyed in 2020 said they’d buy a new tablet or smartphone instead of repairing their current one. Cost and inconvenience of repair were two of the main reasons for this).

Smartphone with screen removed and inner components exposed resting on dark surface.

Many products, including various modern electronic devices, are either too difficult, or too expensive to repair. So a lot of people end up just buying a replacement instead. Photo by Joel Rohland on Unsplash.

These ‘recyclable’ and ‘repairable’ products that are not practical to recycle or repair are also single-life products. Basically, if you have to really go out of your way to make sure a product doesn’t end up as waste, it is single-life! And that counts for reusables as well as single-use items.

But is this even a big deal? Shouldn’t one life be enough for these products?

Why Are Single-Life Products an Issue?


Every single time a new product is produced, some amount of energy and resources will be used up.


Reusable coffee cups, reusable cups and flasks made from coated stainless steel, most ceramics and drink glasses, many modern electronic devices. These are just some examples of single-life products. But so what? Why does this really matter?

Well, where do we even start?

Resources

Maybe it makes sense to start at the start. The beginning of a product’s life where resources and energy are required to actually make the product possible.

Every single time a new product is produced, some amount of energy and resources will be used up. (This is even true for products made from recycled materials, as energy will be needed to mould these recycled materials into new products).

And as resource extraction and processing is one of the main contributors to climate change and biodiversity-loss worldwide, it makes a whole lot of sense to try and limit our use of fresh resources as much as we conceivably can!

This is never going to happen when we still have single-life products, because the resources these products contain are never likely to be used again. What a waste.

Emissions

Factory with red and white stripy chimney emitting smoke next to motorway.

Unfortunately for every new product we produce, it’s very likely there are going to be some emissions involved! Photo by Marcin Jozwiak from Pexels.

Of course every time a new product is produced there are also emissions involved. Deadly, dangerous, planet-warming emissions! Each new product needs to be manufactured, packaged, and transported around the world. So wouldn’t it make sense to make sure every product has as many lives as possible?

Global Waste Crisis

Now we get to the part where the product has served its initial purpose. If it’s a single-life product, repairing or recycling it won’t be a practical or cost-effective option. And so, you guessed it, the product inevitably ends up as waste.

And that is a big problem. Possibly bigger than most people even realise.

Globally, we are producing more waste today than ever before, and worldwide waste is expected to nearly double by 2050. Not all of this waste comes from single-life products of course, but some of it does.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

What’s the Solution?

As we’ve seen, single-life products lead to increased resource extraction, pollution, emissions, and waste. Basically, they make this planet a less hospitable place for us to live. And the thing is, no product ever really needs to be single-life!


This is an issue that in some way affects every one of us, and if we want to, we can all be a part of the solution.


Before we ever even get to the production stage, it’s possible to eradicate single-life products by designing for circularity. So products are easy to repair, and practical to recycle.

And if we can combine circular design with other solutions like extended producer responsibility, legislation to make product repair more accessible, appropriate adjustments to recycling infrastructure, and collaboration between everyone involved, there’s no reason we ever have to produce a single-life product again.

But maybe the first thing you can do to tackle the issue is; share this article with as many folks as possible! Get the word out! Single-life products are not good enough and we all need to come together and do better! Design better, produce better, buy better, collaborate better, demand better!

This is an issue that in some way affects every one of us, and if we want to, we can all be a part of the solution.

For us, the solution has already begun.

This article was created by Adam Millett of Word Chameleon, in collaboration with Circular&Co.

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