FINGERTIP (Project Sustainable Development)
Besides my minor, I'm working on a certificate ‘Technology for Sustainable Development' as an extra specialization. A part of this education program is to create a project about sustainable development. I found a nice opportunity to work on that by a design challenge organized by Circo, a collaboration of businesses who support a circular economy.
In my vision it is important to take care of the earth’s resources, and circular economy will be a way to keep as much as possible value in the products, avoiding pollution at the end of life of products. As such I found Circo and signed up for their design classes to learn about circular economy.
At one of those day’s I heard from the ‘Circular Design Challenge', which was organized for students from different universities, so I decided to join. The challenge contained the redevelopment of an existing product to suit in a circular economy. By a blog and expert meetings, we got feedback on our idea and the different design phases we went through. Finally we got exposure on the Dutch Design week and there the public and experts could vote for the best idea.
A bathroom closet is developed, the 'Fingertip' to separate waste as there is no such design on the market, suitable for small rooms. In the meanwhile the product should be either well disposable or recyclable. The separation of waste itself will contribute to recycling and minimizing the amount of waste ending up in an incinerator. Secondly, the design will be developed as environmentally friendly, so it will not end up as polluting waste in the 'end of use’ phase. The material choices will be either durable, reusable or biodegradable. Besides this, the design should be encouraging to separate waste. The final design is developped focussed on the hospitality world, as such the design is quite straight and modern (also considering the material of the prototype).
Although the circular design challenge required just a concept wise approach, I took also the next step developing a tangible prototype to support the interaction with the potential user and to find out how they would react on it. As such I got positive and useful feedback on the Dutch Design week. The prototype also is exposed in the showroom of Allcare, a wholesaler of bathroom accessories. The CEO liked it to show his customers, because of the idea is new; combining most accessories in one closet, which is also easier to mount and to clean in hospitality environments.
I have gained insight in the very complex processes involved to change our linear economy into a circular economy. The network involved in the process either can be supportive or make it almost impossible to continue the circle. Just a very small example in my case; when I want to dispose of my product which can be made of biodegradable material as bamboo fibres with corn starch, (as nowadays some kitchen furniture is made of), it easily can turn out that it still would end up in a cinerator as there are no proper ways of disposal developed yet.
The lectures and the exercises of the designclasses by Circo as well as discussions with their experts provided a lot of knowlegde about businessmodels suitable for a circular economy. As such for the Fingertip an applicable business model is defined as well, while keeping room for vision development regarding value propositions and future possibilities.