The Circular Industries Talks are organized every second Wednesday at the Circular Industries Hub. In this edition, Flora Poppelaars, Senior advisor Circular Economy at Partners for Innovation, talks about Design for Divestment: Improving the consumer experience of e-waste collection. Curious for more? Take a look at the recording at the bottom of this page.
Consumers play an essential role in closing the loop: they decide where the electronics are going after use. They need to be an integral part of the design of solutions for e-waste collection.”
The start of our relationship with products is designed to be a rich experience providing joy and excitement with each new purchase. Both consumers and designers however often overlook the importance of the End-of-Use consumer experience and its impact on a transition towards a Circular Economy (CE). More and more products and systems are being designed to fit a CE. However, the potential advantages embedded within such designs are often unrealized if consumers fail to return products during the disposal phase.
The end-of-use process for products from a consumer perspective can be better understood through the concept of 'divestment'. Divestment encompasses both physical and emotional separation between consumers and their products during the last phase of the consumption cycle.
As part of the Horizon Europe project called INCREACE, we are researching how to improve e-waste collection through Design for Divestment.
The stages of divestment models what happens inside the heads of consumers at the end-of-use of products. Various factors influence the different stages of the divestment process. These factors are interdependent, dynamic over time and different for each individual consumer. Research with OEMs and producer responsibility organizations (PROs) revealed there is no universal solution to change consumer behaviour durably and yield higher collection rates for e-waste. However, based on e.g. various design projects, we are learning how to leverage opportunities to guide companies and organizations with designing effective collection solutions.
Curious about the whole story? Listen to Flora in the Circular Industries talks.
The Circular Industries talks
The goal of the Circular Industries talks is to share knowledge across Leiden, Delft and Erasmus and to complement and deepen the knowledge already available within the Circular Industries Hub. The talks are organized on Wednesday morning from 10:00 to 11:00. The talks are online (Microsoft Teams).