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Curriculum/DP Design/C2.2 Design for a Circular Economy

Design for a Circular Economy | C2.2

Guiding questionHow do designers minimise waste and reduce product waste and pollution?

Take, make, use, throw away. That sequence is so normal it is easy to miss how recent and how strange it is, and the circular economy is an attempt to design our way back out of it. The central insight is that waste is not an unfortunate by-product of making things. It is a design decision, taken at the drawing stage, by someone who chose a glued seam over a screwed one or seven mixed polymers over one.

This topic sits in Topic C rather than on a recycling poster because it puts the responsibility in the right place. Recycling asks the consumer to fix a problem after the fact, usually badly and usually too late. A circular approach asks the designer to prevent it, which turns material choices, joining methods and disassembly into environmental decisions rather than purely technical ones. That connects straight to C4.1, and it makes for strong Paper 2 answers, because a question about waste answered with specific design decisions will always beat one answered with good intentions.

Students must be able toCompare and contrast a linear approach and the circular economy.

The linear economy is characterised by the phrase "take, make, consume, dispose." Resources are extracted from the environment, processed into products, consumed, and then discarded (sent to landfill or incineration) at the end of their life. This model relies on non-renewable energy and generates large volumes of waste. It treats resources as unlimited and end-of-life as inevitable.

The circular economy is a closed-loop system where resources are continuously repurposed, mimicking the closed nutrient cycles of biological ecosystems. Kirchherr et al. (2017) define it as an economic system that replaces the "end-of-life" concept with reducing, reusing, recycling, and recovering materials in production, distribution, and consumption processes. It relies on renewable energy, and examples of materials in circular use include PET beverage bottles (collected, shredded, and remanufactured into new bottles or textiles) and paper and cardboard (continuously recycled into new paper products).

Key comparison:

  • Linear: focuses on production efficiency, market consumption, and maximising short-term profit; generates high levels of waste and significant cumulative environmental impact; relies on non-renewable energy and virgin raw material inputs
  • Circular: focuses on reuse, recycle, and recover; aims to eliminate waste at the design stage; relies on renewable energy; treats end-of-life materials as inputs for new production cycles rather than disposables

Policy context: In 2020, the European Commission adopted a Circular Economy Action Plan as part of the European Green Deal, targeting climate neutrality (net-zero greenhouse gas emissions) by 2050 and a halt to biodiversity loss by 2025. China uses five-year plan cycles to review and revise its sustainability goals and circular economy targets, embedding them into national economic planning.

Design
Manufacture
Distribution
Sale
Maintenance
Reuse
Refurbish
Recycle
Resource Recovery

Hover, focus or tap a stage to see what actually happens there.

Students must be able toDiscuss how designers can design products in ways that eliminate waste and pollution, including designing for longevity, upgradability, disassembly and dematerialisation.

Tackling waste early, at the design stage itself, is far more effective than trying to manage it after a product exists, and this is the thinking behind design-for-manufacture (DFM) guidelines. Designers use a family of "design-for" strategies to eliminate waste and pollution across the full product life cycle:

  • Design for materials: select appropriate, low-impact materials; reduce toxic substances, hazardous waste, and polluting emissions; specify single-component materials for moulding (avoiding mixed-material assemblies that cannot be separated for recycling); and mark recyclable materials using resin identification codes for later identification at recycling facilities.
  • Design for process: reduce energy consumption and the number of manufacturing steps; minimise production waste, emissions, and the need for secondary operations such as plating, painting, and welding, which add chemical inputs and energy.
  • Design for assembly: analyse components and sub-assemblies to reduce the total part count and the variety of fasteners and tool types required; snap-fit and press-fit joints replace adhesive bonds and screws, making products easier to assemble initially and easier to disassemble for repair or recycling at end of life.
  • Design for longevity: create longer-lasting products through repairability (standardised spare parts, accessible fixings), upgradability (modular components the user can replace independently), high-quality materials that do not degrade prematurely, timeless aesthetics that do not become unfashionable, and emotional connection that makes users unwilling to discard a product while it still functions. A product that lasts 10 years instead of 2 generates far less waste across its user base.

Dematerialisation describes a steady drop in how much energy or material it takes to deliver the same product or service over time. Examples include email replacing fax and physical surface mail, miniaturisation of electronics, and streaming services replacing physical discs. Dematerialisation directly supports the circular economy by reducing resource inputs per unit of value delivered.

Jevons' Paradox (rebound effect): In 1865, English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that more efficient steam engines led to increased total coal consumption, not a reduction. Cheaper, more effective steam power expanded into new applications (more factories, trains, ships), so total coal use rose even though each engine used less fuel per unit of work. Designers must be aware that efficiency improvements alone cannot be assumed to reduce total resource consumption. If a more fuel-efficient car makes driving cheaper, users may drive more often or further, partially or fully offsetting the gain. Systemic responses and behavioural design (e.g., full-load prompts on appliances) are needed alongside dematerialisation.

Discussion
Is recycling actually circular, or just a slower line?

Recycling a PET bottle isn't really a closed loop. Every recycling pass loses some material quality (a process called downcycling), the collection, sorting and reprocessing steps consume energy and water of their own, and most plastic labelled "recyclable" is only recycled once or twice, if at all, before it's landfilled or incinerated anyway. A genuine closed loop, glass or aluminium recycled indefinitely without quality loss, is the exception, not the rule.

Does a product that gets recycled once, then landfilled, belong anywhere near the word "circular"? Where would you draw the line between a true circular economy and a linear economy that just has one extra, partially effective step bolted onto the end of it?

Students must be able toDiscuss why biodegradable materials are a preferred material in a circular economy model.

Biodegradable materials break down through natural biological processes (decomposed by microorganisms) into water, minerals, and organic matter. This end-of-life pathway is fundamentally different from conventional synthetic plastics, which persist in the environment for hundreds of years, fragmenting into microplastics that enter food chains and waterways.

Why biodegradable materials are preferred in a circular economy:

  • Provide soil nutrients: when biodegradable products compost, they return organic matter and minerals to the soil, supporting agricultural productivity rather than depleting it
  • Reduce landfill waste: biodegradable materials that complete their biological cycle do not accumulate in landfills, freeing capacity and reducing methane generation from anaerobic decomposition of buried organic material
  • Lower greenhouse gas emissions: compared to incineration or landfill of persistent plastics, biodegradation (especially aerobic composting) produces lower net greenhouse gas emissions over the material's lifetime
  • Regulatory compliance: many jurisdictions are introducing bans or levies on single-use plastics and non-biodegradable packaging; using biodegradable alternatives helps companies avoid fines, comply with regulations, and access markets that require it
  • Closed biological cycle: in the circular economy framework, biodegradable materials participate in the biological cycle: they safely re-enter natural systems after use rather than requiring industrial recycling or persisting as pollution

Limitations: Not all biodegradable materials break down under ordinary conditions. Some require industrial composting facilities (specific temperature, humidity, and microbial conditions) that may not exist in the disposal location. Designers must specify the correct end-of-life pathway and ensure it is accessible to users: labelling alone is insufficient if the infrastructure does not exist.

Students must be able toDiscuss how designers can consider the recovery and restoration of products, components and materials through take-back legislation, reuse, repair, recondition or recycling.

Circular economy thinking requires designers to plan the entire product life cycle (including what happens to the product, its components, and its materials when the user is finished with it). Recovery and restoration form the closing loop of circular design:

  • Reuse: the product is used again in its original form, by the same or a different user, without any manufacturing processing. Example: glass milk bottles collected, cleaned, and refilled. Requires standardised, durable packaging or product forms.
  • Repair: individual components are replaced or fixed to return a product to working order, extending its useful life. Designers support repairability through accessible fixings, available spare parts, and standardised components. The Right to Repair movement advocates for legislation requiring manufacturers to provide spare parts and repair documentation.
  • Recondition (refurbish): products are cleaned, tested, and restored to a like-new condition, often with replacement of worn components. Reconditioning typically requires more intervention than repair but less resource input than manufacturing new. Example: remanufactured printer cartridges, refurbished electronics.
  • Recycling: materials are recovered and processed into raw material inputs for new production. To facilitate recycling, designers use the resin identification coding system (numbers 1–7 inside a triangle of chasing arrows): 1 PET, 2 HDPE, 3 PVC, 4 LDPE, 5 PP, 6 PS, 7 OTHER. Single-material components and clear labelling enable efficient sorting at recycling facilities, avoiding costly spectroscopic analysis. Mixing plastic types (e.g., a PET bottle with a PVC label) contaminates recycling streams.

Take-back legislation places legal responsibility on manufacturers to recover products at end of life. Examples include the EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive (requiring manufacturers to fund and organise collection and recycling of electronics) and extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes for packaging. Take-back legislation creates an economic incentive for designers to design for disassembly and recyclability: the manufacturer pays for end-of-life handling, so reducing that cost requires designing products that are cheap to recover.

Key concept
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

Extended Producer Responsibility is a policy principle that makes the manufacturer of a product financially and physically responsible for that product once the consumer is finished with it, rather than leaving disposal entirely to local waste authorities or the consumer. In practice this usually means the manufacturer must fund, organise or directly operate the collection, recycling or safe disposal of its own products at end of life.

EPR changes the economics of design described elsewhere in this objective: when a manufacturer knows it will personally bear the cost of recovering a product, a difficult-to-disassemble design becomes a direct cost on the company's own balance sheet rather than a cost hidden in someone else's landfill bill. This is why take-back legislation and EPR schemes create a financial incentive to design for disassembly, single-material components and standardised fasteners.

EPR in practice
  • EU WEEE Directive: manufacturers fund and organise collection and recycling of electronic products
  • Packaging EPR schemes: producers pay fees scaled to the recyclability of their packaging, rewarding simpler, single-material designs
  • Battery take-back schemes: retailers and manufacturers are required to accept used batteries for safe recycling
Case Study
A Fairphone with its back cover removed showing a modular battery and components

Fairphone

A smartphone you're meant to open up, not send back.

Read case study →

Students must be able toIdentify renewable energy sources and discuss why the circular economy relies on the use of renewable energy.

Renewable energy sources are those that are naturally replenished on human timescales and do not deplete a finite stock:

  • Solar: photovoltaic (PV) panels convert sunlight to electricity; solar thermal collectors heat water directly
  • Wind: onshore and offshore wind turbines convert kinetic energy of moving air to electricity
  • Hydroelectric: flowing or falling water drives turbines; includes run-of-river, dam reservoirs, and pumped-storage systems
  • Geothermal: heat from the Earth's interior is used for electricity generation and direct heating
  • Tidal and wave: kinetic and potential energy of ocean tides and waves; still emerging at commercial scale
  • Biomass and bioenergy: organic material (wood, agricultural waste, purpose-grown energy crops) burned or converted to biogas; considered renewable only when sustainably sourced and managed

Why the circular economy depends on renewable energy: The circular economy's goal is to eliminate waste and pollution across the full system: not just the product, but the energy used to make, process, and recycle it. Fossil fuels are finite and produce greenhouse gas emissions that accumulate in the atmosphere as a form of irreversible waste. A circular economy powered by fossil fuels is not truly circular because:

  • Fossil fuels are extracted and consumed: they cannot be "recovered and restored" like materials
  • CO₂ emissions from combustion are a form of pollution that cannot be simply recycled back to fuel: they require massive carbon capture infrastructure to offset, which does not yet exist at scale
  • Energy must flow through the system continuously; if that flow depletes finite stocks and generates persistent atmospheric pollution, the system cannot claim to be closed-loop

Renewable energy provides the continuous energy flow required by circular processes (recycling, remanufacturing, composting, take-back logistics) without depleting finite resources or generating waste that cannot be managed within the system.

Ten questions covering all five learning objectives, from the linear and circular models through to recovery, restoration and renewable energy. Select one answer per question, then click "Check all answers" to see your score and the explanations.

Q1 · 2.2.1 Linear vs Circular Economy
Which phrase describes the traditional linear economic model?
The linear model runs in one direction and ends in landfill or incineration, treating resources as unlimited and disposal as inevitable. It also depends on non-renewable energy and virgin material inputs. A circular system replaces that final step so materials re-enter production instead of leaving the system.
Q2 · 2.2.1 Linear vs Circular Economy
In a circular economy, the concept of end-of-life is replaced by:
The principle applies across production, distribution and consumption, so no stage of the system is designated as finished. PET bottles collected and remanufactured into new bottles or textiles, and paper recycled repeatedly into new paper, are the everyday illustrations. It is worth asking how closed a loop really is, since most plastics are downcycled once or twice at best.
Q3 · 2.2.2 Design-for Strategies
Which of the following is an example of dematerialisation?
Dematerialisation is a steady fall in the material or energy needed to deliver the same service. Miniaturised electronics and streaming replacing physical discs are the other standard cases. The impact does not disappear, since servers and networks have footprints of their own, but the resource input per unit of value delivered drops sharply.
Q4 · 2.2.2 Design-for Strategies
Jevons observed in 1865 that more efficient steam engines led to greater total coal consumption, not less. The lesson for designers is that:
Cheaper, better steam power spread into more factories, trains and ships, so total coal use rose even as each engine used less. The modern equivalent is a more economical car that makes driving cheap enough to do more of. Countering the rebound effect needs systemic and behavioural design alongside efficiency, such as prompts that encourage running an appliance only when full.
Q5 · 2.2.2 Design-for Strategies
A laptop is designed with modular components so a user can replace a failed part rather than the whole machine. This is:
Longevity is pursued through repairability, upgradability, durable materials, aesthetics that do not date, and an emotional attachment that makes users reluctant to discard something still working. Keeping a product in use is the cheapest loop in the circular model, since a device lasting ten years rather than two removes four replacements from the waste stream.
Q6 · 2.2.3 Biodegradable Materials
Why are biodegradable materials preferred within a circular economy model?
Completing the biological cycle keeps material out of landfill, avoids the methane produced by anaerobic decomposition of buried organic waste, and returns organic matter to the soil. Conventional plastics do the opposite, fragmenting into microplastics that enter food chains and waterways rather than decomposing.
Q7 · 2.2.3 Biodegradable Materials
What is the main limitation a designer must account for when specifying a biodegradable material?
Specific temperature, humidity and microbial conditions are needed for many biodegradable polymers, and labelling alone achieves nothing if that infrastructure is absent at the point of disposal. The designer's responsibility is to specify an end-of-life pathway that is genuinely accessible to the user, not merely available in principle.
Q8 · 2.2.4 Recovery and Restoration
The resin identification codes, the numbers 1 to 7 inside a triangle, exist mainly to:
Code 1 is PET, 2 HDPE, 3 PVC, 4 LDPE, 5 PP, 6 PS and 7 other. Sorting matters because incompatible polymers contaminate a batch: a PET bottle carrying a PVC label is the standard example. Single-material components and clear marking avoid the cost of spectroscopic analysis at the recycling facility.
Q9 · 2.2.4 Recovery and Restoration
Take-back legislation and extended producer responsibility schemes change a designer's incentives because:
Once the cost of end-of-life handling returns to the producer rather than sitting in someone else's landfill bill, design for disassembly, single-material components and standardised fasteners all become financially rational. The WEEE Directive for electronics and packaging fee schemes scaled to recyclability both work this way.
Q10 · 2.2.5 Renewable Energy
Why can a circular economy not genuinely run on fossil fuels?
Materials in a circular system can be recovered and restored, but burnt fuel cannot, and carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere as effectively irreversible waste. Recycling, remanufacturing, composting and take-back logistics all need a continuous energy flow, so that flow has to come from sources that replenish rather than deplete.
Paper 2 structured questions require extended written responses. Use the sample answers and mark scheme notes to practise and self-assess.
Question 1 · 4 marks
Explain the difference between a linear economy and a circular economy. Use examples to support your answer.
Show example answer

The linear economy is described by the phrase "take, make, consume, dispose." It runs on non-renewable energy, and once a product has served its purpose, it typically ends up dumped in a landfill or burned. The focus is on production efficiency, market consumption, and profits, generating high levels of waste and significant cumulative environmental impacts. An example is single-use plastic bottles that are discarded after one use.

The circular economy is a closed-loop system where resources are continuously repurposed, mimicking biological ecosystems. It is based on renewable energy and the principles of "reuse, recycle, and recover." Kirchherr et al. (2017) define it as replacing the "end-of-life" concept with reducing, reusing, recycling, and recovering materials. Examples include beverage bottles made from recycled PET, and paper and cardboard being recycled, as everyday examples. The goal is to eliminate waste at the design stage and keep materials in use as long as possible.

The circular model also has broader policy support: in 2020, the EU adopted a Circular Economy Action Plan targeting climate neutrality by 2050, and China embeds circular economy targets in its five-year planning cycles.

Question 2 · 6 marks
Describe three different "design for" strategies that help achieve a circular economy. For each strategy, explain one specific action a designer could take.
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1. Design for materials: Designers select appropriate materials, reduce toxic substances, hazardous waste, and polluting emissions. They specify single-component materials for moulding and mark recyclable materials for later identification. Specific action: A designer chooses PET (resin code 1) for a water bottle because it is widely recyclable, moulding the resin code into the base. The designer avoids using multiple plastic types that cannot be separated: for example, not using a PVC label on a PET bottle, which would contaminate the recycling stream.

2. Design for longevity: Designers create longer-lasting products, reducing waste and improving sustainability. Key considerations include repairability, upgradability, high-quality materials, timeless aesthetics, and modular components. Specific action: A designer creates a smartphone with modular components (a replaceable battery, screen, and camera module) so users can replace individual failed parts instead of discarding the entire phone. This extends product lifespan from 2 years to 5 or more years, dramatically reducing electronic waste.

3. Design for assembly: Designers reduce the number and variety of parts and fasteners, and maximise assembly efficiency. Specific action: A designer replaces 10 different screw types with 2 standardised screw types, and replaces glued joints with snap-fit connections. This makes the product easier to assemble initially and (critically for circular economy purposes) easier to disassemble for repair or material recovery at end of life, without requiring specialist tools.

Question 3 · 5 marks
Explain what dematerialisation is and describe Jevons' Paradox (the rebound effect) using the chapter's example of steam engines. Why should designers be aware of this paradox?
Show example answer

Dematerialisation is a steady drop in how much energy or material is needed to deliver the same product or service. Examples include email replacing fax and physical surface mail, and the miniaturisation of electronics. It directly supports the circular economy by reducing resource inputs per unit of value delivered.

Jevons' Paradox: in 1865, English economist William Stanley Jevons noticed that as steam engines became more fuel-efficient, total coal consumption went up instead of down. Intuitively, one would expect more efficient engines to burn less coal. However, the lower running cost made steam power cheaper and more attractive, so it spread into new applications: more factories, trains, and ships. Total coal consumption increased even though each individual engine used less coal per unit of work.

Why designers must be aware: If a designer creates a more energy-efficient product (a fuel-efficient car, an LED light bulb, a better-insulated building), consumers may use that product more often or for more purposes because the running cost is lower. Efficiency improvements alone cannot be assumed to reduce total resource consumption. Designers cannot stop at making a product more efficient: they must also consider system-level effects and behavioural responses. For example, a designer of a highly efficient washing machine might also need to consider how to encourage users to run full loads rather than partial loads, to prevent the rebound effect from eliminating the efficiency gains at the system level.

Question 4 · 4 marks
Explain the purpose of the resin identification coding system (numbers 1–7) and why it is important for design for recycling.
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The resin identification coding system consists of numbers 1 through 7 inside a triangle of chasing arrows, each number representing a different plastic type: 1 PET (beverage bottles), 2 HDPE (milk jugs, detergent bottles), 3 PVC (pipes, flooring), 4 LDPE (plastic bags), 5 PP (food containers, bottle caps), 6 PS (foam cups, packaging), 7 OTHER (acrylic, ABS, nylon, polycarbonate, PLA).

Purpose: The system helps recyclers quickly identify the plastic type of a product or component so it can be sorted into the correct recycling stream. Different plastic types have different chemical compositions and melting points: mixing them compromises the quality of recycled material and may contaminate entire batches.

Importance for design for recycling: When designers specify single-resin components (e.g., PET only, not a mix of PET and PVC) and mould the resin code directly into the part, they make recycling significantly easier and cheaper. Without this coding, recyclers require expensive spectroscopic analysis to identify plastics, slowing down sorting and increasing costs. A product with a PET body but a PVC label is problematic: the label must be manually removed before recycling, or the batch is contaminated. Designing for recyclability means designing for the recycler, not just the manufacturer.

Question 5 · 6 marks
Evaluate the claim that "designing for a circular economy requires designers to think differently about waste, not as an end-point, but as a design failure." Refer to design-for strategies and the concept of waste elimination in your answer.
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The claim that "waste is not an end-point but a design failure" reflects the fundamental shift from linear to circular thinking. In a linear economy, waste is inevitable: products are designed to be discarded. In a circular economy, waste is preventable; it represents a failure to adequately apply design-for principles at the design stage.

Evidence supporting the claim:

Design for materials: If a product ends up in landfill because it is made from mixed, unlabelled plastics that cannot be separated, the designer failed: by not specifying single-component recyclable materials and not applying resin identification codes.

Design for longevity: A product discarded while still functional (because its battery is sealed and irreplaceable, or because spare parts are unavailable) represents a design failure. Repairability, upgradability, and modular components are design decisions, not accidents.

Design for assembly: A product that cannot be disassembled for component recovery or material recycling (because it uses adhesives that cannot be reversed or incompatible mixed materials) fails at end-of-life because of decisions made at the design stage.

Dematerialisation: If a physical product could have been replaced by a digital service (as email replaced surface mail), and it was not, the resulting material waste is partly a design and business model failure.

Nuance (limits of the claim): Jevons' Paradox complicates this: even a well-designed efficient product may increase total resource consumption if it drives higher overall usage. Additionally, a designer can make all the right choices at product level but still generate waste if recycling infrastructure is absent (biodegradable materials that never reach a composting facility) or if take-back legislation does not cover the product category. Waste is not solely a design failure: it is also an infrastructure, policy, and consumption failure.

Conclusion: The claim is largely correct for product-level decisions. Designers have substantial power to eliminate waste through design-for strategies. However, truly circular outcomes also require systemic support: renewable energy, accessible recycling infrastructure, take-back legislation, and behavioural design that counters the rebound effect. Designers must advocate for systemic change alongside making better products.

What is a circular economy? Ellen MacArthur Foundation
ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/circular-econom…
The leading resource on circular economy principles, with diagrams, case studies and an animated explainer. Start here if the loop in 2.2.1 has not clicked yet.
Circular Economy Action Plan, European Commission
environment.ec.europa.eu/strategy/circular-economy-…
The 2020 plan under the European Green Deal, including the 2050 climate neutrality target. Policy driving product design decisions across an entire continent.
Conceptualising the circular economy, Kirchherr et al. (2017)
doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.09.005
The paper the definition in 2.2.1 comes from. The authors analysed 114 separate definitions of circular economy, which tells you something about how loosely the term is used.
Resin identification code, Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code
Codes 1 to 7, what plastic each one is, and the important detail that the chasing arrows symbol never meant the item was recyclable.
Jevons paradox, Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Why making something more efficient can increase total consumption of it. The rebound effect that undercuts efficiency arguments, first noticed with coal in 1865.
Dematerialization, Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dematerialization_(economics)
Delivering the same value with less physical material, with the streaming and digital media examples. Includes the counterargument that the servers are still material.
Right to repair
europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20230601STO938… fairphone.com/en
The EU rules explained by the European Parliament, next to a manufacturer building repairability into a phone. Policy and product for the same idea in 2.2.4.
Five-year plans of China, Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_China
How China sets and revises national targets in five year cycles, which is the planning structure referenced in 2.2.1.
PET bottle recycling, Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PET_bottle_recycling
Collection, sorting, shredding and remanufacture, plus realistic figures on how much PET actually returns as new bottles.

Linking Questions

  • How can high-fidelity prototyping techniques ensure a product can enter the circular economy? (A2.2)
  • Which manufacturing techniques should be avoided when designing products for a circular economy? (A4.1)
  • To what extent does material selection affect a product's suitability as part of a circular economy? (B3.1)
  • How can modular electronic systems aid a design for a circular economy strategy? (B3.4)
  • To what extent does the selection of a particular production system prevent a product from being suitable for integration into a circular economy? (B4.1)
  • Why are some products that are developed using a design for sustainability strategy not suitable to be part of a circular economy? (C2.1)
  • How can the suitability of a product for a circular economy be determined through product analysis and evaluation? (C3.1)
  • To what extent are products designed for a circular economy likely to result in a positive outcome of a life-cycle analysis? (C3.2)
  • To what extent do design for manufacture strategies promote a design for a circular economy strategy? (C4.1)