Dissertation: Service Design for the Circular Economy by Disha Mittal

Service Design For The Circular Economy (Dissertation) Disha Mittal Royal College of Art, London MA Service Design 2021 9903 words

Abstract Through research about consumer behaviour and business supply chains in the context of environmental sustainability and the circular economy, this paper identifies hurdles in shifting from a linear to a circular economy. Building on examples, independently conducted research and drawing from my own practice as a service designer, the paper first seeks to understand these barriers and then proposes the use of service design principles, tools and processes that can be applied to overcome them and ultimately achieve circularity.

Keywords- circular economy, service design, environmental sustainability, consumerism, systems thinking

2

Table of Contents 1.

INTRODUCTION

5

2.

THE USER

8

2.1

Introduction

8

2.2

The beginning of the blame game

8

2.3

Consumer behaviour and sustainability

11

2.4

The user and the circular economy

13

2.5

Summary

14

3.

3.1

BUSINESSES AND SUSTAINABILITY Introduction

15 15

3.2 The case study 3.2.1 Key 3.2.2 About the company 3.2.3 About the material- Polypropylene 3.2.4 Company A and PP: 3.2.5 Clients 3.2.6 Waste during production 3.2.7 Does Company A perceive itself to be environment-friendly?

3.2.8 What the participants are using from Company A, and for what purpose?

3.2.9 What does the use cycle look like in each company?

3.2.10 What were/are the alternatives? Why did they switch?

3.2.11 How is the product being disposed?

3.2.12 Do they think they are environmentally friendly? In what ways?

3.2.13 Discussion/Insights 3.2.14 What would success look like for Company A?

16 16 17 18 18 19 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 29

4.

29

4.1

THE APPLICATION OF SERVICE DESIGN Introduction

29

4.2 Key Characteristics 4.2.1 User-Centred Approach 4.2.2 Systems thinking 4.2.3 Resource Optimisation 4.2.4 Breaking silos 4.2.5 Imaginative ways to fulfil needs

30 30 32 34 35 36

4.3 Pisces- A Brief Case Study- Applying a service design approach 4.3.1 Context 4.3.2 Snook’s approach 4.3.3 Key characteristics of the approach

37 37 38 38

5.

39

CONCLUSION

3

6.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

41

4

1. Introduction Growing up, there were several instances in my childhood that made me deeply think about the natural environment and the absurdity of trashing a place we call home. I was always led to believe that I can brave this fight against climate change, but also that I must do this as a lone warrior. I would often find it absurd that despite being aware of how our actions impact the environment and having the means to change our behaviour we are headed towards doom.

My first introduction to the concept of the circular economy was during my time as a volunteer at the Learning Networks for Sustainability conference hosted by my college in Bangalore, India. There, I was fortunate to listen to Walter Stahel address the conference and hear him speak about the circular economy, an ideology that instantly resonated with me.

The term circular economy has gained popularity in recent years. There is still uncertainty, however, in how to successfully transition to the circular economy. A lack of a comprehensive understanding about what it means, misconceptions about it and a lack of actionable knowledge about how to reach circularity has made it difficult for businesses to adopt it. The term largely remains a buzzword.

As described by the Ellen McArthur foundation: A circular economy is a systemic approach to economic development designed to benefit businesses, society, and the environment. In contrast to the ‘take-make-waste’ linear model, a circular economy is regenerative by design and aims to gradually decouple growth from the consumption of finite resources.1

1

‘The Circular Economy In Detail’ <https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/explore/the-circular-economyin-detail> [accessed 16 October 2020].

5

For the purpose of this paper, we will not delve into the different interpretations and schools of thought that inform the concept of the circular economy. Instead, the paper investigates the challenges faced in building circular economies through research centred around the consumer’s perspective, business supply chains and an independently researched case study of a plastics manufacturing firm.

The overall structure of the study takes the form of five chapters, including this introductory chapter. Chapter two explores the context of environmental sustainability and circular economies with the customer as the focal stakeholder. The chapter concludes with a summary of the problems discovered. The drawbacks identified are that customers face a disproportionately high level of individuated responsibility to be environmentally sustainable, the current linear economic system makes it difficult for customers to engage in pro-environmental actions, most of the green actions expected from customers are focused on the acts of purchasing and that much of the research about pro-environmental consumer behaviour focuses on individual psychological reasons.

For a circular economic model to be successful, customers need to be empowered with opportunities to participate in it moving beyond green purchases, they need to be viewed as one of the key stakeholders and need to be central to the process of designing these systems in which they’re expected to behave pro-environmentally.

We then shift our focus to business supply chains in the third chapter. In the case study of a company that manufactures multi-use corrugated polypropylene boards and boxes, it was found that there are many hurdles which currently prevent the company from achieving circularity. Among the problems identified, the most notable were a lack of collective responsibility across their clients, the inability to extract the full value of the manufactured products through systems of reuse, poor design of a product meant to be recycled, a high level of ignorance about end-of-life (EOL) processes of the product and the futility of its recyclability.

The problems that emerged from this research across the worlds of the user and the manufacturer demanded a systemic shift to enable effective circular economies.

6

One of the necessary evils of the circular economy is the oversimplification of the term. It is necessary, because as an ideology it helps gain more popularity if it can be easily understood. However, this oversimplification of the term has led businesses to miscomprehend it, believing that it’s only about waste reduction and recycling. Through the research in this paper, it is evident that many fail to see the entire perspective. Aptly worded by Ken Webster, the Head of Innovation at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the author of The Circular Economy A Wealth of FlowsAs a result, circular economy is one of those inconvenient big picture ideas: it’s about seeing the way the world really works; it’s a dynamic, complex system, it’s full of feedback, exchange, building up and breaking down. It has stocks and flows of resources that are interdependent.2 Surprisingly, many links were found in the principles of service design and that of the circular economy, the most prominent one being the focus on systems thinking. Numerous ways in which service design could prove useful in overcoming barriers to enable a systemic shift to the circular economy were identified. In the penultimate chapter of the paper, the use of these principles and tools of service design have been described in detail. By adopting a user-centred approach, leveraging and optimising different kinds of resources, breaking silos, reimagining different means to fulfil users’ needs, while being grounded in the principles of systems thinking, service design can help overcome the inertia needed and aid in the transition to a circular economy. The chapter describes in detail how the identified barriers can be overcome through service design as a mindset, a toolkit and a process.

This work offers fresh insights into how one can use a service design approach to conquer those wicked problems that prevent the transition to a greener economy.

2

Circulate, ‘4.5 Misconceptions about the Circular Economy’, Medium, 2020, p. 5 <https://medium.com/circulatenews/4-5-misconceptions-about-the-circular-economy-4b1bf12f5c2a> [accessed 26 April 2021].

7

2. The User 2.1 Introduction In popular narratives of environmentally sustainable behaviour, a huge emphasis on individual responsibility at the consumer level is seen with consumers feeling increasingly guilty about their purchase choices and the pressure to be pro-environmental. According to the study conducted by ING it is seen that a significant number of customers believe that their individual actions have a high environmental impact, and a high majority believe that their actions have ‘some’ environmental impact.3 Is it sensible to expect the consumer to make more pro-environmental choices? Does individual responsibility end at the point of purchase? This chapter seeks to discuss the role of the individual consumer and the problems of individuation of responsibility that they face.

2.2 The beginning of the blame game Why is there an implicit responsibility on the consumer? Is this valid?

In the late 1960s, when the American beverage industry increasingly started using plastic to package their beverages, they realised that they would soon need be held accountable for the waste generated by this plastic packaging. To prevent this, they funded the Keep America Beautiful ad campaign in 1971, which cleverly propagated that consumers can help stop pollution. As expected, the consumer started paying closer attention to the disposal of the products bought. In the environmental movement, this was one of the first politically problematic campaigns that indirectly averted the blame an industry had foreseen and held customers responsible for a by-product of their manufacturing design.4 This move set the precedent for other waste generating industries to follow.

3

‘Ing-Circular-Economy-Survey-2020-Learning-from-Consumers.Pdf’ <https://www.ingwb.com/media/3076131/ing-circular-economy-survey-2020-learning-from-consumers.pdf> [accessed 26 April 2021].

4 Sarah Holm Johansen, Broken <https://www.netflix.com/watch/81002391?tctx=2%2C2%2C%2C%2C%2C> [accessed 28 December 2020].

8

In the Harvard Business Review article, The Elusive Green Consumer: Unilever estimates that almost 70% of its greenhouse gas footprint depends on which products customers choose and whether they use and dispose of them in a sustainable manner—for example, by conserving water and energy while doing the laundry or recycling containers properly after use.5 Similarly, In response to the Guardian’s questions, some of the oil companies argued that they are not responsible for our decisions to use their products.6 It is clear that big corporations in positions of power have always led consumers to believe that their actions amount to significant environmental impact and that they have the power of choice.

In a slightly different example, Rauno Raal, the CEO of Estonia’s successful Deposit Return Scheme that has managed to bring a large share of Estonia’s customers to return PET bottles believes that citizens are as important as the government to fix such problems of pollution.7 According to him, consumption behaviour are shaped by ‘personal values’ that are influenced by our interactions with our families and teachers.8 I wonder how feasible it is to rely on changes in these personal values to change our behaviour patterns, if the people in our immediate social circles are similar consumers placed in the same wasteful linear economy.

The journal article by Evans, Welch and Swaffield studies the construction and mobilisation of the ‘consumer’ in the context of food waste.9 The research recognises this responsibilisation 5

Katherine White, David J. Hardisty, and Rishad Habib, The Elusive Green Consumer <https://hbr.org/2019/07/the-elusive-green-consumer> [accessed 5 February 2021].

6 George Monbiot, ‘The Big Polluters’ Masterstroke Was to Blame the Climate Crisis on You and Me | George Monbiot’, The Guardian, 9 October 2019, section Opinion <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/09/polluters-climate-crisis-fossil-fuel> [accessed 26 April 2021].

7 ‘Is It Fair to Blame Coca-Cola and Big Corporations for Our Waste Crisis?’, The Guardian, 2017 <http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/aug/02/coca-cola-big-corporations-waste-crisisplastics-recycling-packaging-circular-economy> [accessed 17 April 2021].

8 ‘Is It Fair to Blame Coca-Cola and Big Corporations for Our Waste Crisis?’

9 David Evans, Daniel Welch, and Joanne Swaffield, ‘Constructing and Mobilizing “the Consumer”: Responsibility, Consumption and the Politics of Sustainability’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49.6 (2017), 1396–1412 <https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17694030>.

9

of the consumer and the high individualisation of this responsibility when it comes to sustainable consumption.10 The study done by them is particularly important to the discussion here. In their initial research, they found that international governmental, non-governmental organisations, activists, etc agreed and took for granted that environmental change was expected at the level of the consumer. They noted that much of the research about food waste did not seek to understand why it was being wasted, and the little research done about why was focused on decisions made at the individual consumer level. Research about solving the problem of food waste also showed that food waste campaigning done by organisations, intermediaries, agencies of authority, charities, food industries, etc were all focused on advice in kitchen management and individual decisions.11 The researchers point that the way food waste data was presented to the consumers often emphasised on what the carbon footprint meant for each household, proving that ‘individual households bear responsibility for the problems being recorded at an aggregate level.’12 This individuation of responsibility has also been identified and spoken about by the environmental activist George Monbiot. In an article he wrote for the Guardian he says, The ideology of consumerism is highly effective at shifting blame.. .. This individuation of responsibility, intrinsic to consumerism, blinds us to the real drivers of destruction.13 In another article, Monbiot writes that a ‘better form of consumerism’ will not save the planet.14 For decades, the consumer has been told to actively participate in the environmental movement by making greener purchases. However, in order to achieve significant environmental impact, the consumer needs to be allowed and encouraged to easily participate in a system that is designed for this. It is impossible to expect the consumer to live a zero-waste lifestyle in a system that propagates a throwaway culture supported by

10

Evans, Welch, and Swaffield.

Evans, Welch, and Swaffield.

12 Evans, Welch, and Swaffield.

13 Monbiot.

14 ‘We Won’t Save the Earth with a Better Kind of Disposable Coffee Cup | George Monbiot’, The Guardian, 2018 <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/06/save-earth-disposable-coffee-cup-green> [accessed 26 April 2021].

11

10

corporations, governments, cultural intermediaries, etc. They bear a disproportionate onus of producing lesser waste and having a lesser carbon footprint. This kind of responsibility often coupled with a high level of ignorance about environmental impact leads to unreasonable demands made by them. For example, in 2018, a large number of people demanded that disposable coffee cups be made from corn starch, without knowing about the adverse impact that growing and processing corn has on the environment.15 In response to Raal’s claim that citizens’ personal values drive changes in consumption patterns, Adam Lusby, a lecturer in the implementation of the circular economy, believes that the consumer is wrong to be blamed“We don’t need to go on a big campaign to change people’s behaviour, we just need to change how we design stuff.”16 Consumers have thus become the scapegoat for polluting industries so that they can continue business as usual. It is fairly easy to say that the consumer has the power of choice and can therefore can make more pro-environmental decisions. Although, they do have a really important role to play in the environmental discourse they cannot be blamed or even expected to behave differently while being trapped in a system which does not allow it, let alone encourage. A lot of consumers feel guilty when they make the less environment friendly purchase because of this implicit assumption that they are responsible for the warming of the climate. In fact, a lot of research around why consumers don’t behave in the more proenvironmental way also highlights this assumption that the onus is on the consumer. This forms the focus of the next section.

2.3 Consumer behaviour and sustainability Few consumers who report positive attitudes toward eco-friendly products and services follow through with their wallets. In one recent survey 65% said they want to

15 16

‘We Won’t Save the Earth with a Better Kind of Disposable Coffee Cup | George Monbiot’.

‘Is It Fair to Blame Coca-Cola and Big Corporations for Our Waste Crisis?’

11

buy purpose-driven brands that advocate sustainability, yet only about 26% actually do so.17 The paper Feelings That Make A Difference describes how feelings of guilt and pride positively affect consumer behaviour by encouraging consumers to make more environment-friendly choices.18 These are feelings that affirm one’s sense of agency. When consumers believe that their actions can have a positive consequence, they are more likely to make a pro-social or pro-environmental choice.19 It is evidenced that the experience of these feelings in a single consumption episode can also impact future behaviour positively.20 It is important to note here that the research done towards the aforementioned paper focuses on how individual actions of ‘consumption’ can be influenced. Similar to our previous findings, this research also looks at environmental responsibility at the individual level.

The reasons for the attitude-behaviour gap are identified, studied and described in Johnstone and Tan’s journal article that explores why consumers who claim to be ecofriendly or pro-environment rarely reflect this attitude in their actions. 21 The three main categories of reasons identified were ‘It is too hard to be green’, ‘Green stigma’ and ‘Green Reservations’.22 Customers believe that external factors make it difficult for them to make green choices, they don’t know if whether their individual actions can actually make a difference and/or they don’t believe the green messaging that companies send out.23

17

Katherine White, David J. Hardisty, Rishad Habib, The Elusive Green Consumer <https://hbr.org/2019/07/the-elusive-green-consumer> [accessed 4 February 2021].

18 Paolo Antonetti and Stan Maklan, ‘Feelings That Make a Difference: How Guilt and Pride Convince Consumers of the Effectiveness of Sustainable Consumption Choices’, Journal of Business Ethics, 124.1 (2014), 117–134 (p.126).

19 20

Ibid. p. 118.

Ibid. p. 129.

21

Micael-Lee Johnstone and Lay Peng Tan, ‘Exploring the Gap Between Consumers’ Green Rhetoric and Purchasing Behaviour’, Journal of Business Ethics, 132.2 (2015), 311–28.

22

Ibid. p. 321.

23

Ibid. p. 321.

12

In her article, Ekaterina Komova speaks about cognitive biases people tend to have in response to environmental protection. These cognitive biases identified by Per Espen Stoknes, the Norwegian psychologist, are centred around distance, doom, dissonance, denial and identity.24 The further away we feel from a problem, in terms of time or physical space, the more difficult it is for us to perceive it. The next psychological defence mechanism is the feeling of doom, described as ‘collapse porn’ or ‘apocalypse fatigue’ by Stoknes which happens through desensitization.25 Cognitive dissonance also enables people to justify happenings related to the climate crisis and their own actions, without a scientific basis. The core cognitive bias which is often difficult to overcome is that of the identity factor wherein people try to protect their own personal and cultural values first, if they clash with their expected pro-environmental behaviour.26 Clearly, the research around the intention-action gap has implicit assumptions and problems. Not only does it not take into account the systemic issues that influence this gap, but also it purely focuses on individual behaviour with respect to making greener purchases.

The highlighted research on consumer behaviour considers psychological reasons that explain why consumers find it hard to be green. It isolates the consumer from the wider system. Neither does it take into account factors like access, awareness, choice, nor does it place the consumer in the context of how businesses reach out to them, what values influence the purchase, etc. It is also notable that the consumer is largely expected to behave responsibly by making the greener purchase. As pointed to in the earlier section, a better way of consumerism will not solve the climate crisis. For the circular economy to work, consumers will need to engage in other acts beyond ‘consuming’.

2.4 The user and the circular economy By participating in a circular economy, users have many more options for pro-environmental actions. By engaging in acts of reusing, repairing and recycling worn-out objects that we’re the

24

Ekaterina Komova, ‘How cognitive biases make us feel numb about the ecological issues?’ < http://blog.bio-ressources.com/2019/11/01/how-cognitive-biases-make-us-feel-numb-about-the-ecologicalissues/> [accessed 5 February, 2021] 25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

13

‘owner-users’ of we’re conserving resources of energy and material and consequently producing less waste.27 A study conducted by Thungren and Zenouz looks at the consumer behaviour around recycling and reuse of mobile phones in the context of a circular economy.28 It was found that consumers have a storing behaviour which prevents materials from being put back in the loop to be used or recycled.29 According to them this finding poses problems for the recycling industry and questions the effectiveness of implementing future circular economy based policies. A value-action gap was noted in this study as well, where people who view recycling as important do not follow through with their actions. According to the study, the perceived convenience of recycling was found to be the strongest predictor of increased recycling behaviour among the respondents.30 Although this study explores possible barriers in consumer behaviour to adopting the circular economy, it does not take place within a circular system. Thus, the research done here cannot imply that consumers will be less participative in a circular economy based on their current behaviour in a linear one. It is imperative to understand that a system which isn’t designed for people to recycle their e-waste cannot expect them to. The study again fails at understanding how the system influences their behaviour.

2.5 Summary To summarise, the problems identified in this chapter are 1. Customers face a disproportionately high level of responsibility to be environmentally sustainable.

2. There is a high level of individuation of responsibility instead of collective responsibility.

27

Walter R. Stahel, The Circular Economy: A User’s Guide (Milton, UNITED KINGDOM: Taylor & Francis Group, 2019), pp. 26-37.

28

Gustav Thungren and Nastaran Zargari Zenouz, ‘Consumers and the Circular Economy’ (University of Gothenburg, 2017) <https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/85145142.pdf> [accessed 9 February 2021].

29 Thungren and Zenouz.

30 Ibid.

14

3. The current linear economic system expects but makes it difficult for customers to engage in pro-environmental actions.

4. Most of the pro-environmental actions expected from customers are focused on the acts of purchasing or disposing responsibly.

5. Much of the research about pro-environmental consumer behaviour focuses on psychological reasons for individual actions and decisions.

To overcome these problems, customers will have to be involved in the process of designing the system so that their needs and limitations are understood and met by businesses systems. The role of the green ‘consumer’ needs to shift to a green ‘user-owner’ to allow for greater participation in green behaviour. Consumer behaviour needs to be situated in the wider context of business systems, policy, communities, etc. Chapter four will look at how these goals can be achieved.

3. Businesses and Sustainability 3.1 Introduction Having discussed the problems that emerge from expecting customers to be more environmentally responsible, let’s now look at what businesses are doing to make an ecopositive impact and the barriers they face. This chapter mainly investigates a real-life case study of a company that manufactures multi-use plastic.

In an article by the Guardian, Coca-Cola has promised to up the recycled content of its bottles to 50% by 2020 and research the impact of deposit return schemes (DRS), where consumers are asked to pay a refundable deposit on cans or bottles. It has also launched a campaign ‘to

15

encourage people to recycle and dissuade littering’, said Nick Brown, head of sustainability at Coca-Cola European Partners.31 Coca Cola’s promise sounds familiar to initiatives taken by other companies. Although this seems like a big pro-environmental move, it is still based in consumerism and looks at managing waste better. In response to this initiative, Carina Millstone says‘The idea of driving public awareness, making it easier for people [to recycle], isn’t going to cut it... Coca-Cola will not exist if we achieve sustainability. That’s the reality of it.’32 Many businesses believe that the circular economy is ‘recycling on steroids’ as Ken Webster puts it. Many fail to realise that the circular economy means optimising systems to extract values from the ‘nutrients’ (materials) circulating through them, thereby eliminating the idea of waste.33 The example of Coca Cola looks at single-use plastics and is relatively simpler to understand.

To allow a deeper insight into how businesses might become circular, an exploratory study of a plastics manufacturer that makes multi-use plastics was conducted. The study was aimed at understanding how environmentally sustainable the company actually might be, whether it is a true example of the circular economy and what challenges it might be facing to achieve full circularity. The supply chain was studied by interviewing the company and their clients.

3.2 The case study 3.2.1 Key Company A- Manufacturers of plastic masterbatch and PP sheets and boxes Participant A- Director of Company A

31

‘Is It Fair to Blame Coca-Cola and Big Corporations for Our Waste Crisis?’

‘Is It Fair to Blame Coca-Cola and Big Corporations for Our Waste Crisis?’

33 Circulate.

32

16

Company B- Manufacturer of natural stone; Uses PP boxes from company A for packaging, delivered to the end customer Participant B- Manager at Company B Company C- Deals with rigid plastic packaging; Uses PP boxes from company A to transport preforms Participant C- COO of Company C Company D- Manufacturers of paper corrugated boxes and paper pulp egg trays; use PP sheets from Company A to hold egg trays while drying Participant D- Owner of Company D Company E- Manufacturers of products like corporate gifts, no-parking boards, promotional products made from PVC, PP, MDF and acrylic boards; Uses PP sheets from Company A mainly to make no-parking boards Participant E- Owner of Company E Company F- Startup dealing in 3 D printing; uses PP boards from Company A to print awareness campaigns for the government Participant F- Co-founder of Company F

3.2.2 About the company Company A is a 24-year-old Bangalore based family business. The company owns and runs a few factories set up to manufacture plastic compounds- mainly masterbatches (colour dyes for plastics), polypropylene (PP) corrugated sheets and boxes made from those sheets. The boxes are mainly used for the purpose of returnable packaging in other businesses mainly from the automobile and FMCG industries.34 Company A claims that their products are environmentally sustainable as polypropylene is recyclable and replaces paper, thereby saving trees from which the paper is made.35 They believe that their business allows for circularity, by virtue of selling returnable packaging.

For this study, the focus was on the PP sheets and boxes.

34 35

Participant A, Polypropylene Case Study.

Ibid.

17

3.2.3 About the material- Polypropylene Polypropylene is a plastic with the resin code 5.36 It is recyclable and has a wide variety of uses and applications such as clear film packaging, white appliances, extruded sheets, reusable containers, etc.

The melting point and strength of PP makes it the single most popular plastic packaging material in the United States, with approximately five billion pounds produced annually in the U.S. (2010). But according to PP production and recycling figures provided by American Chemistry Council, PP is one of the least recycled postconsumer plastics, at a rate below 1 percent for post-consumer recovery.

Because of the short lifespan of PP made packaging, the majority of these thermoplastics end up in landfills as waste.37 The degradation and incineration of PP leaks toxins into the atmosphere. PP can be recycled up to 4 times without a drastic negative effect on its structural strength.38

3.2.4 Company A and PP: Company A sells about 200 tonnes of PP material in the form of corrugated sheets and boxes every month. The believe that the unique selling proposition of this material and product is its versatility.

3.2.4.1 The PP corrugated Sheet

36

‘Recycling of Polypropylene (PP)’, AZoCleantech.Com, 2012 <https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=240> [accessed 11 February 2021].

37 ‘Polypropylene Recycling - An Introduction’, The Balance Small Business <https://www.thebalancesmb.com/an-overview-of-polypropylene-recycling-2877863> [accessed 11 February 2021].

38 ‘Recycling of Polypropylene (PP)’.

18

The sheets made by Company A are used for printing, fabrication (returnable packaging), trolleys, layer pads, partitions, separators, packaging, floor protection tiles used for waterproofing in buildings, etc. The sheets are used to make physical advertisements, by printing ads on them. Printing is either done by manual or mechanized screen printing, or by digital printing.39

3.2.4.2 The PP Corrugated box The widespread use of these boxes is in returnable packaging. Company A believes that these boxes are better than their paper counterparts because even though the cost of a plastic box is 4-5 times that of a similar one in paper, it can be reused up to 20-25 times and hence is more economical.40 In some instances, materials like Velcro (attached by aluminium rivets), corner supports (added by ultrasonic welding), staples, PVC plastic handles, printing are added to the boxes to suit the needs of the client.41

3.2.5 Clients Some of the products are used extensively in the automobile industry, FMCGs, e-commerce companies, etc. Their clients range from dealers, distributors (wholesalers) to corporate clients. The e-commerce industry (companies like Flipkart, Amazon, etc) use the sheets for cladding to make partitions for shelving and storage in their warehouses.42

3.2.6 Waste during production The leftovers of extruded sheets are ground again, mixed with their raw material and reused. This does not impact the quality of the sheets since the leftovers were fresh and

39

A. A. 41 A. 42 A. 40

19

clean. This pointed to the fact that if the material is clean, then recycling them would produce the same quality as that of virgin material. In this way, there is no waste created during production.43

3.2.7 Does Company A perceive itself to be environment-friendly?

Insights from a discussion with Participant A about the pro-environmental benefits of Company A’s work: -

Company A believes that they’re very close to achieving circularity by virtue of recyclability of polypropylene and by following some CE principles such as reuse. The PP cartons are reusable up to 20-25 times, and thus each box replaces 20-25 boxes made from paper, thereby saving trees. When asked how many trees are being saved per plastic box, Participant A was unsure, but was certain that a specific number of trees were definitely being saved.44

-

80% calcium is used to replace plastic in plastic compounds. These are known as fillers, and although they reduce the strength of the product, they reduce the cost of the compound considerably, as calcium is cheaper than plastic. This is interesting to note as (seen in other instances as well) this decision driven by the cost benefit. The intention was not to be environmentally friendly, but that was a coincidental aftereffect of this decision, although this doesn’t necessarily undermine the value of the action. She says it is environment friendly because it reduces the consumption of pure plastic, but its impact could be questioned in that the calcium is ultimately being fused with plastic to create the plastic compound, which is non-biodegradable.

The advantage, however, could be that less petrochemicals and energy is being used to create the plastic.45

-

She was unable to provide details of the electricity consumption, water consumption to cool the machines and the amount of air pollution the 10 machines in their factories produce.

43

A. A. 45 A. 44

20

-

It was interesting to note that she said she believes her company has a positive environmental impact, but when asked whether her company is helping minimise the climate crisis, she was unsure.46

(This was insightful because it shows that people may view their actions as eco ‘-friendly’ but when looking at this from a more serious lens of alleviating the climate crisis, it becomes difficult for them to calculate the actions of their impact.)

-

They do not take responsibility of what happens to the product after it’s sold, unless someone wants to send it back for repair. She also believes that the material is always in use, even after it’s reprocessed- so it isn’t really wasted. She believes it’s not Company A’s responsibility to take back the boxes from their clients, because a lot of time, effort and manual labour goes into segregating the boxes, separating the materials like Velcro, etc, cleaning and reprocessing it.47

3.2.8 What the participants are using from Company A, and for what purpose?

The participants in this study were recruited from different companies that use Company A’s product in unique ways.

Company D manufactures paper pulp egg trays. These wet trays are collected on PP corrugated sheets and kept in the sun to dry. In this way, the PP sheets get reused up to a few hundred times over 8-10 months. The sheets are used until they buckle or crack. Once these sheets are unusable, collectors of plastic waste collect this from their factory. The scrap vendors used to pay around Rs 20-25 per kg.48

46

A. A. 48 Participant D, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021.

47

21

Company B uses PP boxes to package small amounts of natural stone (10 sq ft packaging).

These boxes go through warehousing, distributed dealers and finally to the end-customers.

They buy around 8000 boxes in a year.49 Some of the different products made by Company E are no-parking boards (primary product), billboards, Point-Of-Sale boards and standees using PP sheets. Company E purchases 10000-15000 PP corrugated sheets each month. Their customers are direct clients and dealers.50 Company C uses the boxes for the purpose of returnable packaging within their own company, to transport preforms of their other products.51 Company F buys around 80,000 sheets a month from Company A, to print and sell covid-19 awareness posters to the government.52

3.2.9 What does the use cycle look like in each company?

The purpose and number of times of reuse of the products varies in each company.

Company D reuses each sheet hundreds of times- 7-8 months each, after which the sheets lose their durability.53 Company B does not reuse the boxes because they’re sold to the end consumer.54

49

Participant B, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021.

Participant E, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021.

51 Participant C, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021.

52 Participant F, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021.

53 D. 54 B. 50

22

Company E makes end customer products, so even though the billboards, point of sales boards and no-parking boards are used for a few-many months, they aren’t exactly being reused.55 Company C uses the boxes for the purpose of returnable packaging for up to 7-10 cycles, after which they get it repaired instead of disposing it.56 Since this is a new venture for Company F, they don’t know the use cycle of the product after selling it to the government.57

3.2.10 What were/are the alternatives? Why did they switch?

The reasons for using PP sheets/boxes are because they are economic in the long run, when compared to its paper alternatives or that the sizes can be easily customisable as in case of Company B. The difference of the actual carbon footprint is difficult to calculate because it depends on various factors such as the energy used to manufacture the PP sheets versus the paper corrugated sheets, the energy required to recycle both of them, the by-products produced, even though it may seem obvious that the processing of petrochemicals would be more harmful than that of paper processing.

Company D has always used PP sheets. Some other egg tray companies use corrugated cardboard sheets (which can be reused 2-4 times). Cardboard sheets are less expensive but in the long run the PP sheets are more economical as they have a much higher shelf life.58 Similarly, Company C finds it more economical to use PP boxes. They think that switching to PP boxes has increased their ‘sustainability footprint’ since the number of boxes they

55

E. C. 57 F. 58 D. 56

23

procure has decreased manifold. They also believe that they are ‘saving trees’ by not using paper boxes, hence positively impacting the environment.59 Earlier, Company B was using wooden crates but made the switch to PP boxes because they needed customisable sizing. Plus, they wanted to use less wood because that is environmentally detrimental. Participant B said they can save the environment through plastic because it can be recycled and believed that ‘wood recycling’ leads to more pollution.60

3.2.11 How is the product being disposed?

When asked about the disposal of the product, the clients displayed some level of ignorance. Some clients said that they were selling the plastic to scrap vendors but were unaware about the specifics of this. Among all the clients, only Company D seemed sure that it was reselling its PP waste. None of the companies knew what was happening to the PP after it was sold to the scrap vendor or what happens to the recycled PP. Participant C said that the boxes are recycled through scrap dealers of plastic. He added that they’ve recently set up a plastic recycling plant and can eventually start recycling the waste plastic corrugated boxes. Upon asking how often they sell the damaged boxes to the scrap vendors, he said that that had never happened.61 This directly contradicted what he had said earlier. He now said that they send back the damaged boxes to Company A for repair and they don’t in fact send it to the recyclers’. At a later instance, he said the waste most definitely does not go to the scrap vendor because they’re a zero-waste factory.62 This response from Company C was vague as they weren’t able to articulate what ultimately happened to their waste since they haven’t started recycling this waste on their own yet.

59

C. B. 61 C. 62 C. 60

24

Company D mentioned that once the PP sheets lose their strength, they sell it to scrap vendors at a resale value of Rs 23-25 per kg.63 Participant B was also unsure about the disposal of boxes by the end customer but assumed that they must be getting recycled owing to the strict nature of the US/Canadian governments. Since these boxes are single sheet boxes, one can’t really reuse them after they’ve been opened, he added.64 Company E said that they also sell the plastic waste to a scrap vendor but are unaware whether their consumer products are getting trashed or recycled. He said that since he has been dealing with these products for thirteen years and has not ‘seen’ them lying around on land in the outskirts of settlements, he believes that they must be getting recycled.65 Company E’s response was particularly absurd as his observation of the absence of litter cannot imply that the material is being recycled.

3.2.12 Do they think they are environmentally friendly? In what ways?

Every participant enthusiastically answered this question with a ‘yes, of course!’. None of the responses mentioned the use or disposal of the PP products while talking about environmental sustainability.

Company E believes their company is eco-friendly because they plant trees around their factory. He also first mentioned that all their products are recyclable, and only much later corrected himself in saying that the PVC sun-board is actually not and is polluting in nature.

He claimed to be satisfied with the recyclability of the materials, although he does not know if they actually get recycled.66

63

D. B. 65 E. 66 E. 64

25

At Company D’s factory, there is no wastewater being released to the ground and all the paper raw material they use is recycled. Thus, they’re affirmative that their company is environment friendly.67 Participant B believes they’re 100% environment friendly because they treat their affluents and recycle stone waste to nearby communities. Apart from this they’re also ISO 14001:2015 certified.68 Company C recently won the Golden Peak of the Central Government for Sustainability and they claim that a lot of work is done in terms of ensuring a healthy natural environment.69

3.2.13 Discussion/Insights 1. Lack of a collective responsibility Since the products have different purposes, use cycles, and disposal it makes it harder to track them and figure how they ultimately get used. It would be difficult for Company A to make sure that the products are ultimately being recycled. Each company would have to take responsibility of its own cycle, increase transparency and allow for the cross pollination of information between the companies themselves and between Company A and the companies.

When Participant E was asked about the nature of the printing inks used on the PP sheets, he said if the dye is produced in an environment-friendly way, it shouldn’t be problematic.70 This was a pattern observed across other interviews. When participants were asked about their current situation, they often answered in terms of ‘if’, ‘would be’ and ‘when’- in very futuristic, detached terms as if it isn’t their responsibility to be aware about their current situation. This evidences their ignorance and avoidance of responsibility. ‘Recycle’ was a word everyone used in their guilt and defence.

67

D. B. 69 C. 70 E. 68

26

2. Value across all chains isn’t being extracted fully Company B, which uses the PP boxes to package its retail product doesn’t extract enough value from them owing to the immediate disposal by the consumer, even though the boxes used are durable enough to be reused. It is likely that similar clients of Company A don’t reuse the products efficiently either.

3. Complex product design Polypropylene is a 100% recyclable material. Although some of Company A’s clients sell their packaging waste to scrap vendors, it is difficult to recycle the material without manually separating the different materials in the boxes. The boxes often have materials like Velcro patches, aluminium rivets, dyes, cellophane tape, stickers, etc stuck or welded on them. Even though the boxes are made largely from PP, the rest of the materials need to be removed before it can be processed in the recycling plant. This calls for a product redesign of the boxes wherein they could be made mono-material to fulfil the functions provided by the other materials. For example, to substitute the Velcro straps, a secure folding mechanism could be developed with the PP sheet itself.

4. Ignorance about actual environmental impact Most clients perceive that PP corrugated sheets and boxes are environment-friendly because they replace paper, thereby saving trees. This was also expressed by Participant A.71 However, during a discussion with Participant D, who manufactures paper corrugated sheets and boxes, it was revealed that paper corrugated sheets are made purely from recycled paper waste. He was sure that in India, no trees are felled to make this paper because it is a very costly process. To maintain the quality of the paper, some of the pulp is made with imported paper waste because that adds strength to it.72 This was an unexpected finding which now adds a new dimension to the debate about what is more environmentally sustainable.

71 72

A. D.

27

5. Ignorance about end-of-life processes Many companies do not know what ultimately happens to the scrap plastic. Although some participants said that the waste PP sheets and boxes are sold to scrap vendors, when further questioned about this they often didn’t have answers to how often they sold it, what the scrap vendors did with the waste and who these vendors were. This doesn’t provide clarity on what is happening to the waste and highlights their ignorance.

6. Recyclability isn’t necessarily pro-environmental The chapter titled Being Less Bad Is No Good from Cradle To Cradle discusses the feasibility of recycling: Just because a material is recycled does not automatically make it ecologically benign, especially if it was not designed specifically for recycling. Blindly adopting superficial environmental approaches without fully understanding their effects can be no better and perhaps even worse-than doing nothing.73 In this case study, it is crucial to further understand the effects and challenges of PP recycling. It is alarming to know that less than 1% of PP in the world is recycled. Even though there are no figures for the percent of PP corrugated sheets that is being recycled, this shows that the material faces many challenges during the recycling process.

In the same chapter, the authors reference polypropylene packaging: Legislation in Europe requires packaging materials that are made of aluminum and polypropylene to be recycled. But because these boxes are not designed to be recycled into new packaging (that is, to be reused by the industry to make its own product again), compliance results in additional operating costs. The components of the old packages are often downcycled into lower-quality products until they are

73

McDonough and Braungart, p.59.

28

eventually incinerated or landfilled anyway. In this instance as in many others, an ecological agenda becomes a burden for industry instead of a rewarding option.74 During the interview with Participant A, she mentioned the many difficulties faced by her machines while trying to reprocess waste PP. She complained of a much lower quality of reprocessed sheets their machines produced.75

3.2.14 What would success look like for Company A? For Company A to achieve circularity, they would have to ascertain that the materials stay as long as they can in the loop of reuse and recycle. This can be achieved through better product design, taking collective responsibility towards the end-of-life processes by breaking down of silos that are the different companies to share knowledge on recycling, product use, overcoming ignorance recycling and their actual environmental impact. Company A could possibly consider alternative business models such as leasing out the packaging boxes so that the ownership of the boxes lies with them in order to efficiently repair/recycle/reuse the products at the end of their lifecycle.

4. The Application of Service Design 4.1 Introduction This chapter focuses on how a service design approach can be adopted in solving problems for the circular economy. In doing so, the subsections of this chapter describe key facets of service design.

Gwen Cunningham at an event by Circle Economy:

74 75

Ibid. p.59.

A.

29

‘I realised quite early on as a designer that no matter what good effort I made into building products for circularity (that is a product built to be durable or built to be recyclable)- all that good intention at the end of the day would never come to fruition unless there was an underlying circular business model there to actually enable the product to live a long, a useful life… There’s a bigger system at play that I cannot really influence.’76 A lot of discourse about service design and the circular economy focuses on the realisation that products are only a sub-optimal way of meeting a need, and that services can meet user needs efficiently as well. An overused yet effective example is that one doesn’t need to own a car to commute, and can instead use public transport services or Uber. Moving beyond this discussion, service design as a mindset, a toolkit and a process is also essential in building circular economies. Here, we will understand in detail how a service design approach is central to an effective and efficient transition to circularity.

4.2 Key Characteristics 4.2.1 User-Centred Approach One of the most salient features of service design is that it puts the users and their experiences at the heart of its approach. The different phases of the process- research, problem definition, prototyping and refining the solution all require the involvement of users. The most common practices being that of ethnography, co-creation and participatory design.

During the research phase, tools like the use of cultural probes give qualitative insight into the lives of the customers and help the designers understand the different personas they’re designing for. It helps them understand the different systems that the user is part of and

76

Gwen Cunningham, The Circular Toolbox For Apparel Brands Launch Event by Circle Economy, 1 April 2021.

30

interacts with. This then allows for a seamless integration of the service system that is being designed for the user.

Design Ethnography is aimed at understanding the future users of a design, such as a certain service. It is a structured process for going into depth of the everyday lives and experiences of the people a design is for. The intention is to enable the design team to identify with these people, to build up an empathic understanding of their practices and routines and what they care about. This allows the team to work from the perspective of these users on new designs for relevant slices of their daily lives.

Designers use this understanding to work on idea generation, concept development and implementation.77 During the prototyping phase, designers often involve the users actively in the process, instead of following a traditional top-down approach. This enables users to design for themselves and bring forth what works for them. If not for a service design approach, the users would only be treated as passive stakeholders whose essential needs and consequentially unintended behaviour would only be an afterthought in building a product service system. This is Service Design Thinking describes the importance of co-creation in the service design processFurthermore, co-creation during the design process facilitates a smooth interaction between the stakeholders during the actual service provision– essential for both sustainable customer and employee satisfaction. Through co-creation customers get the chance to add value to a service in partnership with the service provider early in the development of the service. The more a customer gets involved in the service provision, the more likely this service is of evoking co-ownership which in turn will result in increased customer loyalty and long-term engagement.78

77

Stickdorn Marc and Schneider Jakob, This Is Service Design Thinking: Basics-Tools-Cases (Amsterdam, UNITED STATES: BIS Publishers, 2012), p. 102. <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=1122641> [accessed 26 April 2021].

78 Stickdorn Marc and Schneider Jakob, p. 31.

31

4.2.2 Systems thinking The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social-psychological-economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite.

Our persistent, intractable, global problems arise directly from this mismatch.79 Donella Meadows Many of the problems identified at the user level and the industry level demand a systems thinking approach to be understood and consequently solved. The following list of problems identified in the previous chapters can be directly overcome using systems thinking: From chapter two: 1. Customers face a disproportionately high level of responsibility to be environmentally sustainable.

2. There is a high level of individuation of responsibility vs collective responsibility.

3. Much of the research about pro-environmental consumer behaviour focuses on psychological reasons for individual actions and decisions From chapter three: 1. Lack of a collective responsibility 2. Value across all chains isn’t being extracted fully 3. Ignorance about end-of-life processes 4. Recyclability isn’t necessarily pro-environmental This chapter will describe why and how systems thinking can help overcome these problems to build a circular economy and how it forms a core principle of service design.

So far, we have seen a high polarisation of responsibility and how that is ineffective in achieving environmental sustainability. Systems thinking enables one to view every entity and stakeholder as part of systems and subsystems.

79

Donella Meadows, ‘Whole Earth Models and Systems’, The CoEvolution Quarterly, Summer, 1982, 98–108.

32

Since a lot of research about consumer behaviour in the circular economy and environmental sustainability focuses on psychological and individualistic reasons, systems thinking enables us to look at the systemic factors that affect the way users behave with respect to purchases, storing, recycling, etc. As discussed earlier, the user-centred tools of service design allow designers to do exactly this to understand the different systems that users experience and are part of.

The tip of the iceberg is the events or occurrences that people meet with on a daily basis. The events are simple and taken out of their relationship with other events but put together more than one event form a pattern. Patterns reveal observable trends and are although difficult to see, structured by the way the system is organized, the bottom of the iceberg.80 Through the different kinds of research tools it uses, good service design is grounded in observational, ethnographic, co-creative research that seeks to understand these underlying causes and reasons for user behaviour by placing them in the ecosystem of flows and other entities they are affected by. In an interview with Lucy Kimbell, she emphasises that although user stories are important, they need ecosystem mapping to understand ‘resources and capabilities that are brought together in an offering to cocreate value.’81 When asked how service designers can affect organisational change, she saysYou need an understanding of the actors, the cultures, and infrastructures within which they come to exist and to act and the relationships that exist between them, which are dynamic and in flux. Designers need to understand that there are multiple sets of accountabilities and relations shaping how actors engage and what happens in a system. There needs to be an understanding of power relations, identities, subjectivities. Stories and maps provide pathways through and insights into all this.82

80

Pamela Aggesund, ‘The Sustainable Development Way of Implementing Circular Economy’ (Stockholm University, 2018).

81 Lara Penin, An Introduction to Service Design (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017).

82 Penin.

33

This description by Kimbell elucidates how systems can be understood and comprehended to map important relations that provide insights about the system behaviour, crucial to affect organisational change. Her description helps us understand that consumers cannot be isolated from the system to understand their behaviour.

A systems thinking approach is central to the service design mindset and many tools used in the service design process are a direct manifestation of this. Tools like ecosystem mapping and stakeholder mapping, often done in co-creation with the actors of the system being studied are useful to understand how these different entities influence each other’s behaviour.

These tools of service design not only help the designer but also help inform the different actors of what the system looks like. The ‘system’ does not end at the boundaries of the organisation or business itself- it extends to stakeholders outside of it, such as other stakeholders along the supply chain, waste management systems, governmental agencies, etc. Facilitating conversations between these different actors through co-designing workshops allows information to be shared across the participants. Problems such as the ignorance about EOL processes (as in the case of Company A) won’t arise if such silos are broken down.

4.2.3 Resource Optimisation The optimisation of resources is a common theme across all schools of thought about the circular economy. Even though some of Company A’s products were being reused several times, many were not. One of the properties of the kind of PP products made by Company A is its reusability, but in some cases, this property is being undervalued. As a result, its value as a nutrient in the system and its derived monetary value are lost. While speaking about the opportunities of a circular industrial economy, Walter Stahel summarises this efficiently: The circular economy is thus about maximising the use value of stocks within the vision of a sustainable society, encompassing stocks (assets, capitals) of natural, human (work and acquired skills), cultural (material and immaterial), financial and manufactured 34

nature– objects and materials– through an economic lens. The latter is key as it focuses on economic value, which in turn introduces ownership and liability– notions which do not exist in the circularity of nature.83 After gaining insight into how organisations and systems function, service design focuses on how to leverage relationships between the stakeholders and optimise the use of resourcesmaterial resources, energy, human resources, etc. The most popular examples of services like Uber, Airbnb and Rent The Runway are simple illustrations of this optimisation of material resources. Leasing and subscription models have also become popular ways of fulfilling user needs through lesser physical resources. Many of these services tend to look at increasing access to products, which is a suitable consideration for Company A.

4.2.4 Breaking silos In the case of Company A, a high degree of ignorance and lack of awareness about the environmental feasibility of the products and their EOL processes was noted in the company and their clients. Such ignorance tends to manifest as outcomes of organisational silos where different departments within an organisation focus on their area of expertise, without communicating to the other departments. As we have seen, a system is not only restricted to the organisation in question. It extends to the larger ecosystem of suppliers, government authorities and waste management systems. The lack of information sharing across such sub systems also leads to silos. In the quest for building circular economies, overcoming these silos becomes all the more essential. In an article, the Ellen McArthur Foundation writes, ‘Inspired by the principles of nature, it (the circular economy) is entirely consistent with notions of process and relationship, of flux and flow rather than stasis.’84 Having a constant flow of resources, whether they are tangible material resources or data is crucial to the circular economy whose aim by definition is to create ‘circular’ systems.

83

Walter R. Stahel, The Circular Economy: A User’s Guide (Milton, UNITED KINGDOM: Taylor & Francis Group, 2019) <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=5784306> [accessed 27 October 2020].

84 Ellen MacArthur Foundation, ‘How History Has Forged the Path to a Circular Economy’, Medium, 2020 <https://medium.com/circulatenews/how-history-has-forged-the-path-to-a-circular-economy-150c5278e38d> [accessed 25 April 2021].

35

Service design busts silos by increasing knowledge-sharing and collaboration through its workshops and also through the service outcomes. Simon Clatworthy says, ‘Value is created more and more in networks of collaboration rather than in traditional silos of expertise, so it is important to look at who needs to collaborate with whom to create the compelling experiences that will satisfy customers.’85 For Company A specifically, enabling a network of sharing resources and information across the clients, PP scrap dealers will help break these information silos and overcome ignorance about the EOL processes of the product, which will then help in understanding their actual environmental impact instead of allowing to make sweeping statements such as ‘reusable plastic packaging helps save trees.’

4.2.5 Imaginative ways to fulfil needs As mentioned earlier, products are generally suboptimal ways of meeting users’ needs. Lara Penin writes, ‘The principle behind the PSS (product service system) concept is simple: instead of acquiring a product, you acquire the function of said product by paying per use or shared ownership.’86 This is a mindset that can be applied to businesses, product designs and even inner workings of an organisation. One of the problems observed in Company A was the poor design of the boxes that used multiple materials which render the recyclability of polypropylene pointless or energy consuming. Simply applying this seemingly straightforward but powerful mindset, the company can redesign their boxes to continue fulfilling their customer’s needs. Although the company creates unique designs to suit each client, they still use a linear way of thinking. For example, Velcro straps are used to shut the boxes lids securely. By thinking of other ways to securely shut the boxes or by digging deeper to find out why that client requires this need to be fulfilled, the boxes can be redesigned in a way which does not use extra materials.

85 86

Stickdorn Marc and Schneider Jakob.

Penin, p. 32.

36

One of the most popular schools of thought of the circular economy is the cradle to cradle philosophy. This philosophy looks at waste as food- as biological or technical nutrients circulating in the system. In their book, McDonough and Braungart introduce the concept of ‘a product of service’ which they believe compliments the idea of a technical nutrient. By definition, this means that products are a way to fulfil users’ needs and that their users should pay for the function of the product and not the product itself.87 The ownership of the materials of the product always lie with the manufacturer to be able to retain the ‘nutrients’ after their use. The authors emphasise, ‘Designing products as products of service means designing them to be disassembled.’88 In the case of Company A, this approach might be particularly useful to help different supply chains retain more value from the product over time.

4.3 Pisces- A Brief Case Study- Applying a service design approach To sum up how service design can be useful in creating circular and environmentally sustainable economies, it would be helpful to look at a successful real-life example. Snook is a design studio that did a service design project for Innovate UK in partnership with SafetyNet Technologies for their product Pisces.

4.3.1 Context SafetyNet Technologies is a company aimed at making fishing more environmentally sustainable.89 Leveraging the fact that different types of fish are physiologically attracted to different frequencies of light, they built a device which emits light of different frequencies to attract the required fish. This reduces by-catch by 90%, thereby protecting endangered

87

McDonough and Braungart.

McDonough and Braungart.

89 ‘Learn About SafetyNet Technologies & Precision Fishing’, SafetyNet Technologies <https://sntech.co.uk/about/> [accessed 27 April 2021].

88

37

species and is also profitable for fishermen. In order to efficiently deliver this product to the fisherman community, SafetyNet partnered with Snook to create a product service system.90

4.3.2 Snook’s approach Snook used a service design approach to understand how this product could be used by fishermen. They created an end-to end service, a product roadmap and service blueprints as the outcomes of the project to bring the product to the fishing industry and ensure its easy integration into existing systems. Snook believes it was able to create ‘a community of connected fishermen who actively transformed the strategy of a service and product.’91 The process that was used by Snook is a simple example of how advantageous it is to use a service design approach as described in the previous section. Although the project illustrated here isn’t a direct example of a circular economy, the takeaways about how service design can prove to be useful in building sustainable functional systems are useful to further our discussion about its use in circular economies. The main reason for choosing this example was to realise that a product itself isn’t enough to ensure the environmental and economic success it intends to achieve and the subsequent need to understand how a service system is needed to support products. This would be useful for Company A in their quest for creating a sustainable product service system around their products.

4.3.3 Key characteristics of the approach 1. User-centred approach To understand how the product could be used effectively, Snook carried out user research through shadowing and interviewing the fisherman community. They role-played the fishermen to understand how they live to truly design from a place of empathy.

2. Systems thinking- Speaking to different stakeholders

90

‘Pisces: Built by Fishermen for Fishermen’, Snook <https://wearesnook.com/work/pisces-built-by-fishermenfor-fishermen/> [accessed 27 April 2021].

91 ‘Pisces’.

38

Many of the designers who worked on this project emphasised the complexity of the systems that the fishing community and industry comprises of. Thus, they spoke to all different kinds of stakeholders involved, ranging from the fisherman community to suppliers, marine management organisations, NGOs and gear makers.92 Not only was this crucial for them in the service design process but also this helped in building strong relations in the industry to easily test and iterate their products. They also focused on co-creating the design with their stakeholders, which was immensely appreciated by the host company.

3. Leveraging existing resources Through extensive research, Snook was able to uncover the strengths of their users. They were able to leverage the close-knit nature of the fishing community, their strong sense of independence and their innovativeness.93 One of their key insights was that the fishermen already had many monitors and existing technological gear and thus they realised it would be more valuable to create compatible content for those monitors, instead of providing them with new ones which was their original idea.94 Thus, Snook’s service design proved to be valuable and crucial to bringing Pisces to the market and ensuring its success.

5. Conclusion The purpose of this paper was to understand some of the limitations and barriers to the implementation of the circular economy. The problems identified within the scope of this paper pointed to the use of a service design approach to tackle them. The paper has tried to mainly look at the realm of a consumer and a business-to-business case study in the context of environmental sustainability. This paper will be useful to businesses that want to begin the transition to a circular model and people who would like to aid that transition. The paper has not looked at barriers of the circular economy in terms of policy, economics and

92

‘Pisces’.

‘Pisces’.

94 ‘Pisces’.

93

39

technology. Further research in these fields, focusing on other kinds of stakeholders must be carried out. Some of the recommendations made for Company A could be experimented with to verify whether it takes them a step closer to understanding and implementing a circular economy.

40

6. Bibliography Aggesund, Pamela, ‘The Sustainable Development Way of Implementing Circular Economy’ (Stockholm University, 2018) Antonetti, Paolo, and Stan Maklan, ‘Feelings That Make a Difference: How Guilt and Pride Convince Consumers of the Effectiveness of Sustainable Consumption Choices’, Journal of Business Ethics, 124.1 (2014), 117–34 ‘Australian Pschological Society’, The Psychology of Climate Change Denial <https://www.psychology.org.au/About-Us/What-we-do/advocacy/Advocacy-socialissues/Environment-climate-change-psychology/Resources-for-Psychologists-and-othersadvocating/The-psychology-of-climate-change-denial> Baker-Brown, Duncan, The Re-Use Atlas: A Designer’s Guide Towards the Circular Economy (Milton, UNITED KINGDOM: RIBA Publications, 2017) <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=5840008> [accessed 28 October 2020] Circulate, ‘4.5 Misconceptions about the Circular Economy’, Medium, 2020 <https://medium.com/circulatenews/4-5-misconceptions-about-the-circular-economy4b1bf12f5c2a> [accessed 26 April 2021] Closing the Loop (Full Film) - English with Multi-Language Subtitles <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g0AYbEoOGk> [accessed 27 October 2020] Cunningham, Gwen, The Circular Toolbox For Apparel Brands Launch Event by Circle Economy, 1 April 2021 Delchet-Cochet, Karen, Circular Economy: From Waste Reduction to Value Creation (Newark, UNITED STATES: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2020) <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=6348641> [accessed 28 October 2020] Doran, Peter, Climate Change and the Attention Economy <https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/climate-change-and-attentioneconomy/> [accessed 15 October 2020] ‘Educational Resources’, Kumu, 2014 <https://kumu.io/ellenmacarthurfoundation/educationalresources> [accessed 25 April 2021]

41

Evans, David, Daniel Welch, and Joanne Swaffield, ‘Constructing and Mobilizing “the Consumer”: Responsibility, Consumption and the Politics of Sustainability’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49.6 (2017), 1396–1412 <https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X17694030> ‘Find Your Nearest Location | Vanden Recycling’, Vanden <https://www.vandenrecycling.com/en/who-we-are/our-locations/> [accessed 11 February 2021] Foundation, Ellen MacArthur, ‘How History Has Forged the Path to a Circular Economy’, Medium, 2020 <https://medium.com/circulatenews/how-history-has-forged-the-path-to-a-circulareconomy-150c5278e38d> [accessed 25 April 2021] ‘FULLTEXT01.Pdf’ <https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1212289/FULLTEXT01.pdf> [accessed 27 April 2021] ‘Get Loopy! | C2C-Centre’ <http://www.c2c-centre.com/library-item/get-loopy> [accessed 28 October 2020] Hazen, Benjamin T., Diane A. Mollenkopf, and Yacan Wang, ‘Remanufacturing for the Circular Economy: An Examination of Consumer Switching Behavior’, Business Strategy and the Environment, 26.4 (2017), 451–64 <https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.1929> ‘How Can Businesses “Nudge” Consumers to Do the Right Thing?’, 2020 <https://www.circularonline.co.uk/features/how-can-businesses-nudge-consumers-to-dothe-right-thing/> [accessed 1 February 2021] ‘Ing-Circular-Economy-Survey-2020-Learning-from-Consumers.Pdf’ <https://www.ingwb.com/media/3076131/ing-circular-economy-survey-2020-learningfrom-consumers.pdf> [accessed 26 April 2021] ‘Is It Fair to Blame Coca-Cola and Big Corporations for Our Waste Crisis?’, The Guardian, 2017 <http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/aug/02/coca-cola-bigcorporations-waste-crisis-plastics-recycling-packaging-circular-economy> [accessed 17 April 2021] Jha, Raghbendra, and K. v. Bhanu Murthy, Environmental Sustainability: A Consumption Approach (London, UNITED KINGDOM: Taylor & Francis Group, 2006) <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=269497> [accessed 28 October 2020]

42

Johansen, Sarah Holm, Broken <https://www.netflix.com/watch/81002391?tctx=2%2C2%2C%2C%2C%2C> [accessed 28 December 2020] Johnstone, Micael-Lee, and Lay Peng Tan, ‘Exploring the Gap Between Consumers’ Green Rhetoric and Purchasing Behaviour’, Journal of Business Ethics, 132.2 (2015), 311–28 KOMOVA, Ekaterina, and Ekaterina KOMOVA, ‘How cognitive biases make us feel numb about the ecological issues?’, Bio-ressources : le blog <http://blog.bioressources.com/2019/11/01/how-cognitive-biases-make-us-feel-numb-about-theecological-issues/> [accessed 11 February 2021] ‘Learn About SafetyNet Technologies & Precision Fishing’, SafetyNet Technologies <https://sntech.co.uk/about/> [accessed 27 April 2021] ‘LeNS International’ <http://www.lens-international.org/> [accessed 28 October 2020] Lin, George C. S., and Shih-Yang Kao, ‘Contesting Eco-Urbanism from Below: The Construction of “Zero-Waste Neighborhoods” in Chinese Cities’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 44.1 (2020), 72–89 <https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12813> McDonough, William, and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (New York: North Point Press, 2002) McTier, Mariko, ‘“Closing the Loop”: Global Case Studies and the Circular Economy in Japan’, Medium, 2019 <https://medium.com/social-innovation-japan/closing-the-loop-globalcircular-economy-sustainability-waste-in-japan-bab4a286c5ed> [accessed 28 October 2020] Meadows, Donella, ‘Whole Earth Models and Systems’, The CoEvolution Quarterly, Summer, 1982, 98–108 Mitschke-Collande, Micha Narberhaus and Joséphine von, ‘Circular Economy Isn’t a Magical Fix for Our Environmental Woes’, The Guardian, 2017 <http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/14/circular-economy-notmagical-fix-environmental-woes-global-corporations> [accessed 17 April 2021] Monbiot, George, ‘The Big Polluters’ Masterstroke Was to Blame the Climate Crisis on You and Me | George Monbiot’, The Guardian, 9 October 2019, section Opinion <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/09/polluters-climate-crisis-fossilfuel> [accessed 26 April 2021] Palafox, Giovani, Susan Lee, Chris Bouch, Dexter Hunt, and Chris Rogers, The Little Book of CIRCULAR ECONOMY in Cities 43

Penin, Lara, An Introduction to Service Design (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017) ‘Pisces: Built by Fishermen for Fishermen’, Snook <https://wearesnook.com/work/pisces-builtby-fishermen-for-fishermen/> [accessed 27 April 2021] ‘Recycling of Polypropylene (PP)’, AZoCleantech.Com, 2012 <https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=240> [accessed 11 February 2021] Stahel, Walter R., The Circular Economy: A User’s Guide (Milton, UNITED KINGDOM: Taylor & Francis Group, 2019) <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=5784306> [accessed 27 October 2020] Stickdorn, Marc, Markus Edgar Hormess, Adam Lawrence, and Jakob Schneider, This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World (Sebastopol, UNITED STATES: O’Reilly Media, Incorporated, 2018) <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=5219777> [accessed 28 October 2020] Stickdorn Marc and Schneider Jakob, This Is Service Design Thinking: Basics-Tools-Cases (Amsterdam, UNITED STATES: BIS Publishers, 2012) <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rcauk/detail.action?docID=1122641> [accessed 26 April 2021] sustainability, Full Bio Follow Linkedin Follow Twitter Rick LeBlanc wrote about, supply chain topics for The Balance Small Business He has been covering the pallet, and packaging industries for 25 years Read The Balance’s editorial policies Rick LeBlanc, ‘Polypropylene Recycling - An Introduction’, The Balance Small Business <https://www.thebalancesmb.com/an-overview-of-polypropylene-recycling-2877863> [accessed 11 February 2021] ———, ‘Polypropylene Recycling - An Introduction’, The Balance Small Business <https://www.thebalancesmb.com/an-overview-of-polypropylene-recycling-2877863> [accessed 11 February 2021] ‘Sustainable Living Film Festival (Sürdürülebilir Yasam Film Festivali)’, FilmFreeway <https://filmfreeway.com/SustainableLivingFilmFestivalSurdurulebilirYasamFilmFestivali> [accessed 28 October 2020] System Reset, 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wyo7u-1IBE&feature=youtu.be> [accessed 28 October 2020] 44

‘The Circular Economy Can Help Save the Planet –⁠ If We Start Innovating Now’, World Economic Forum <https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/the-circulars-accelerator-circulareconomy-zero-waste/> [accessed 11 February 2021] ‘The Circular Economy In Detail’ <https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/explore/thecircular-economy-in-detail> [accessed 28 April 2021] ‘The Podcast on Circular Design, to Inspire and Drive Your Actions • Circulab’, Circulab <https://circulab.com/toolbox-circular-economy/podcast/> [accessed 11 February 2021] Thungren, Gustav, and Nastaran Zargari Zenouz, ‘Consumers and the Circular Economy’ (University of Gothenburg, 2017) <https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/85145142.pdf> [accessed 9 February 2021] US, Loop, ‘Loop US - Returns and Refills’ <https://loopstore.com/returns-and-refills> [accessed 28 October 2020] ‘We Won’t Save the Earth with a Better Kind of Disposable Coffee Cup | George Monbiot’, The Guardian, 2018 <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/06/save-earthdisposable-coffee-cup-green> [accessed 26 April 2021] White, Katherine, David J. Hardisty, and Rishad Habib, The Elusive Green Consumer <https://hbr.org/2019/07/the-elusive-green-consumer> [accessed 5 February 2021] ‘Whole-Earth-Models-and-Systems.Pdf’ <http://donellameadows.org/wpcontent/userfiles/Whole-Earth-Models-and-Systems.pdf> [accessed 28 April 2021] ‘William McDonough about Cradle to Cradle® | C2C-Centre’ <http://www.c2ccentre.com/library-item/william-mcdonough-about-cradle-cradle%C2%AE> [accessed 28 October 2020] Zaman, Atiq Uz, and Steffen Lehmann, ‘The Zero Waste Index: A Performance Measurement Tool for Waste Management Systems in a “Zero Waste City”’, Journal of Cleaner Production, Special Issue: Advancing sustainable urban transformation, 50 (2013), 123–32 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.11.041> <https://kumu.io/ellenmacarthurfoundation/educational-resources#circular-economyeducational-resources/key-for-general-resources-map/cradle-to-cradle> [Accessed 26 January 2021] About Doughnut Economics <https://doughnuteconomics.org/about-doughnut-economics>

45

Interviews A, Participant, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021 B, Participant, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021 C, Participant, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021 D, Participant, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021 E, Participant, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021 F, Participant, Polypropylene Case Study, 2021

46