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3The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is emerging as a key solution in enhancing product transparency, sustainability, and traceability. A DPP serves as a digital record containing vital information about a product's lifecycle. As regulations tighten on sustainability and product circularity, the digital product passport is gaining prominence in sectors like electronics, fashion, and automotive. However, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face significant challenges in implementing DPPs. These challenges stem from various factors, including the complexity of integrating digital systems with existing workflows, unawareness on how to use DPP to develop sustainable products, what are the data and information that must be recorded in the DPP, limited resources, a lack of expertise, and more. Moreover, SMEs often operate in industries with varying regulatory requirements, making the task of ensuring compliance even more complicated. The necessity of collaboration among different stakeholders adds further complexity. This research project seeks to explore these challenges by interviewing a limited number of SMEs. The objective is to understand the awareness and specific barriers SMEs encounter and provide finding that students, researchers, and companies can address in future research projects.
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Abstract Digital Product Passports (DPPs) can play an essential role in accelerating the circular economy. However, the process of DPP implementation and adoption in the Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) sector remains slow and unclear, highlighting a critical gap in the existing research. This study aims to understand how transition dynamics impact DPP adoption in the EEE sector. Based on a multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions, DPPs are positioned as a technological niche innovation that influences actors, transition dynamics, and the corresponding adoption of DPPs. Through a literature review, expert interviews, and case studies, two socio-technical transition pathways are proposed to explain the evolution of the EEE sector and their implications for DPP adoption. The designed pathways illustrate how multiple factors at the landscape, socio-technical regime, and niche innovation levels interact and shape the EEE sector’s response to macro pressures and the mandatory implementation of DPPs by the European Union. A critical insight here is that DPPs should not be viewed solely as a technological concept. Rather, a broad set of interconnected factors plays a decisive role in the successful adoption of DPPs by the EEE sector.
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Abstract. The rapid increase in e-waste poses significant environmental challenges. Most disposed Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) products, including computers, mobile phones, and household appliances, are currently recycled for materials rather than reused, due to perceived low residual value. This approach conflicts with circular economy goals, which emphasize extending products’ lifetime. Many disposed EEE items are “end-of-use” rather than “end-of-life,” indicating potential for reuse after refurbishment or repair. However, effective lifetime extension is hampered by inadequate data sharing and complex data systems within the EEE sector. This research addresses the data sharing problem, which is essential for circular strategies and improving EEE lifetime extension. Digital transformation, particularly through the Digital Product Passport (DPP), can facilitate comprehensive product life cycle management, supporting sustainable practices. We propose an EEE ecosystem modelling approach to compare traditional and circular business models through e3-value models, focusing on washing machines. We investigated the applicability of DPPs to aid decision-making for lifetime extension at collection points.
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In deze studie is onderzocht hoe kleine en middelgrote ondernemingen (MKB) in de hightech maakindustrie Digital Product Passports (DPP’s) kunnen toepassen om hun business te versterken met circulaire economie-praktijken.
Op basis van een literatuuronderzoek, interviews en workshops met zes Nederlandse MKB’s verkent dit onderzoek
• Hoe MKB’s de uitdagingen en kansen van DPP’s ervaren
• Hoe adoptie kan evolueren van naleving naar circulaire businessmodellen
• De rol van digitale technologieën.
Hoewel DPP's centraal staan in het actieplan voor de circulaire economie van de EU, blijven de praktische trajecten voor mkb's onduidelijk. Mkb's staan voor uitdagingen: onduidelijke regels, onzekerheid en gebrek aan instructies met betrekking tot de praktische vereisten belemmeren het maken van investeringen. Het aanpakken van deze uitdagingen is cruciaal om ervoor te zorgen dat mkb's worden betrokken bij de circulaire transitie.
Workshops lieten mkb’s zien hoe DPP’s kunnen worden ingezet om de operationele efficiëntie te vergroten en tegelijkertijd mogelijkheden voor circulaire innovatie te bieden. Eenvoudige technologieën zoals QR-codes en microsensoren bieden hierbij kansrijke oplossingen voor onder andere predictive maintenance, refurbishment, remanufacturing, modulaire upgrades en leasevormen.
De studie presenteert een roadmap voor technologie- en businessmodelinnovatie, waarmee de bedrijven op korte termijn stappen kunnen
zetten, óók wanneer de wettelijke kaders nog niet volledig ontwikkeld zijn.
Zo laat deze studie zien dat DPP’s niet alleen nuttig zijn voor compliance, maar juist kunnen worden ingezet als hulpmiddelen voor circulaire waardecreatie en competitief voordeel
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Making food packaging more sustainable is a complex process. Research has shown that specific knowledge is needed to support packaging developers to holistically improve the sustainability of packaging. Within this study we aim to provide insights in the various tradeoffs designers face with the aim to provide insights for future sustainable food packaging (re)design endeavors. The study consists of analyzing and coding 19 reports in which bachelor students worked on assignments ranging from (1) analyzing the supply chain of a food product-packaging combination to (2) redesigning a specific food packaging. We identified 6 tradeoffs: (1) Perceived Sustainability vs. Achieved Sustainability, (2) Food Waste vs. Sustainability, (3) Branding vs. Sustainability, (4) Product Visibility vs. Sustainability, (5) Costs vs. Sustainability, and (6) Use Convenience vs Sustainability. We compared the six tradeoffs with literature. Two tradeoffs can be seen as additional to topics mentioned within literature, namely product visibility and use convenience. In addition, while preventing food waste is mentioned as an important functionality of food packaging, this functionality seems to be underexposed within practice.
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This chapter explains in brief what is needed to achieve more sustainable manufacturing processes. It develops both aspects of sustainable, economic, and technical feasibility with most focus on the latter. Remanufacturing processes are described together with relevant factors that enhance their effectivity and efficiency. An overview is given of what kind of shopfloor innovations are required in the near future and some suggestions on how digital and other Industry 4.0 technologies could help to move toward circular manufacturing.
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This paper describes some explorations on the concept of disassemblability as an important circularity indicator for products because of its severe impact on reuse value. Although usefulness of the concept for determining disassembly strategies and for improving circular product design clearly shows in earlier studies, the link with Industry 4.0 (I4.0)-related process innovation is still underexposed. For further technical development of the field of remanufacturing, research is needed on tools & training for operators, diagnostics, disassembly/repair instructions and forms of operator support. This includes the use of IoT and cobots in remanufacturing lines for automatic disassembly, sorting and recognition methods; providing guidance for operators and reduction of change-over times. A prototype for a disassembly work cell for a mobile phone has been developed together with researchers and students. This includes the removal of screws by means of a cobot using both vision & the available info in the product’s Bill-Of-Materials, the removal of covers, opening of snap fits and replacement of modules. This prototyping demonstrates that it is relatively easy to automate disassembly operations for an undamaged product, that has been designed with repairability in mind and for which product data and models are available. Process innovations like robotisation influence the disassemblability in a positive way, but current indicators like a Disassembly Index (DI) can’t reflect this properly. This study therefore concludes with suggestions for an evaluation of disassemblability by looking at the interaction between product, process and resources in a coherent way.
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Upcycling has been embraced by circular economy enthusiasts, policy-makers and collaborative initiatives across Europe. Early studies describe upcycling as a concept aimed at resource conservation by keeping products, components and materials at their highest potential value across consecutive product lifecycles, with zero-negative or even potential positive impact on the natural environment. Similarly, more recent literature on the circular economy views upcycling as a strategy to slow and close resource cycles through product life-extension approaches, such as reuse, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing and repurpose. With growing environmental concerns, upcycling has become a re-emerging theme in literature and practice. Cities offer opportunities for an increasing number of upcycling initiatives, but little is known about what manifestations of upcycling occur specifically in urban areas or how these urban upcycling initiatives emerge. For example, so-called Urban Resource Centers seek to tackle challenges in urban solid waste management by encouraging entrepreneurs to create value from local waste streams. Therefore, our objective is to address this literature gap and explore manifestations of upcycling in a city context by means of qualitative research, following a case-study approach based on data collected from research archives and 17 preliminary interviews with entrepreneurs and experts in urban upcycling of furniture and interior design products.
This study contributes to a structured overview of urban upcycling initiatives and the internal and external factors that drive entrepreneurial initiatives and development. Future work will build on this study to make urban upcycling initiatives more widespread and impactful to deliver on their environmental and social goals.
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The transformation of our linear economy into a circular economy poses a formidable challenge. This publication offers a concise overview of six potential ‘gateways to circularity’. ‘Gateways’, as each of them can provide a starting point or entrance for research and educational institutions and businesses alike to actively take part in the transformation to a circular economy by leveraging their particular expertise, be it design, engineering, material sciences, information technology, business theory or the arts. Each chapter is illustrated with a selection of cases of circular design research projects and pioneering business ventures in the Netherlands.
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Network Applied Design Research (NADR) made an inventory of the current state of Circular Design Research in the Netherlands. In this publication, readers will find a summary of six promising ‘gateways to circularity’ that may serve as entry points for future research initiatives. These six gateways are: Looped Systems; Extension of Useful Lifetime; Servitisation; New Materials and Production Techniques; Information Technology and Digitization; and Creating Public and Industry Awareness. The final chapter offers an outlook into topics that require more profound examination. The NADR hopes that this publication will serve as a starting point for discussions among designers, entrepreneurs, and researchers, with the goal of initiating future collaborative projects. It is the NADR's belief that only through intensive international cooperation, we can contribute to the realization of a sustainable, circular, and habitable world.
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