The Circularity Calculator

A tool for circular product development with Circularity and potential value capture indicators

Conference paper (2022)

Authors

I.C. de Pauw IDEAL&CO, Circular Product Design - IDE
B. van der Grinten Circular Product Design - IDE
Bas Flipsen Circular Product Design - IDE
Research Group
Circular Product Design (IDE) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2022 I.C. de Pauw, B. van der Grinten, Bas Flipsen, L.M. Alvarez Mendez
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Published Date

2022

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Industrial Design Engineering

Department

Sustainable Design Engineering

Research Group

Circular Product Design

Abstract

Most products require a redesign to be viable in a circular economy. For instance, by implementing design for disassembly, remanufacturing, recyclability, and using long-lived components. Typically, different solutions can be chosen to improve a products' circularity, and different strategies can be aimed at keeping the product, its components, and materials in the loop.
When developing products for a circular economy, designers and manufacturers want to assess their solutions and choose between alternatives early in the design process. This paper describes the Circularity Calculator, a tool that has been developed to help designers assess the potential resource circularity and value capture of products in the first design stages. The tool provides quantitative indicators that help determine whether and which circular strategies are potentially viable for the company.
This paper discusses the methodology behind the Circularity Calculator, which uses four KPIs that have been developed for assessment; a Circularity indicator, Value Capture indicator, Recycled Content indicator and a Reuse Index. We will explain how the dashboard interface is used to model a linear and circular product system which can be compared on its economic potential. The tool is illustrated with an example concerning the analysis of a household blender.