Designing circular household appliances: a proposal - Hands-on proof-of-concept
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- The ever-increasing amount of e-waste (53.6 Mt generated in the world in 2019 and 74 Mt are expected by 2030) has drastic social and environmental consequences (soils pollution, precious materials extraction, open-air landfills, greenhouse gas emissions,...). Irreparable failures, planned technological obsolescence or even fashion trends are at the source of the early disposal of these objects. However, the linear economy in which we live in today can't be compatible with these emerging challenges. This project aims at investigating one of the many ways to solve the e-waste problem. The research objective was to propose an alternative electronics economy, by enhancing repair tendencies of household appliances thanks to distributed design and local manufacturing processes within a 'FabLab' (a fabrication laboratory). The goal is to give the object as many life cycles as possible (with repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling) to lower the energy consumption and materials extraction associated with the fabrication and use of these appliances. Design has proven to be the major cause of primary disposal and disassembly hindering. As a proof of concept, a hand blender was completely redesigned after the functional and disassembly analysis of a product on the market, turning the latter idea definition into a tangible object. After the construction of a repairability and reproducibility grid destined to designers, manufacturers, repairers and consumers, its repair and distributed design performances were evaluated. The environmental impacts embedded in the production of the object were assessed thanks to a life cycle analysis which proved the need for local materials, recycling options for End-of-Life and educated consumption on raw materials.