Consumer Goods Manufacturers Apply Circular Practices to Improve Sustainability

Virtual Twins Help Rethink the Product Lifecycle

Interested the role circularity plays helping consumer goods manufacturers improve their sustainable product development practices? Whether manufacturing furniture, bathroom fixtures or sports gear, companies turn to circular practices to reduce waste and maximize resource efficiency. Circularity offers manufacturers a way to make gains in sustainability while lowering costs.

What is Circularity in Product Product Development?

Circularity offers a holistic approach to the product lifecycle that prioritizes durability, reparability, recyclability, and resource efficiency.

By replacing the traditional linear “take-make-dispose” model, circularity aims to create a closed-loop system. That means materials ‘circulate’ for as long as possible. A “recycle-make-recycle” model minimizes waste and maximizes value.

Circularity Design Principles: A Way to Optimize Resources

Companies apply circularity in design to reshape and optimize resources. For example, furniture design specifications require easy disassembly for repair to extend a product’s lifespan. Recycled materials reduce a product’s environmental footprint. Some examples of products and practices that reduce waste:

• Furniture & Home Goods: IKEA employs circular practices such as designing furniture for easy assembly and disassembly to promote reuse and waste reduction.
• Sports & Leisure Goods: The Patagonia Worn Wear initiative encourages customers to repair and recycle their clothing to reduce the resources needed for new products.

• Footwear, Watches & Jewelry: Increasingly, sought after footwear, watch, and jewelry designs incorporate recycled materials.  Swiss watchmaker, Swatch introduced collections made from recycled materials such as the Swatch Big Bold line made from bio-sourced plastic derived from castor oil.

Implementing Circular Practices

It’s understandable that implementing circular practices can be challenging for companies –especially larger ones. Overcoming the sheer complexity (multiple suppliers across many geographic locations each with their own regulations) can be a major roadblock. Companies need the right “green tech” to simplify complexity, streamline the use of recycled materials, reduce waste, and optimize resources.

The Role of Eco-Design

It makes sense that decisions made during the early design stages can influence a product’s environmental impact. Some estimate the amount of impact at as much as 80% of a product’s footprint. (UN Environment Programme (UNEP))

Eco-design, at the core of a circularity, helps define the materials, product specification and processes very early. Applying sustainability as part of product requirements at the beginning reduces mistakes (and waste) and extends the lifespan of a product to reduce the need for frequent replacement.

The Powerful Combination: Product Lifecycle Assessment + Virtual Twin Technology

A key aspect of circularity is the holistic view of the product lifecycle. Companies perform a lifecycle assessment (LCA) to understand its environmental impact. An LCA considers things like: material selection, manufacturing, distribution, use, repair and maintenance, disposal, and recycling. Dassault Systèmes offers Lifecycle Assessment tools that streamline this process.

However, to rethink the full product lifecycle a robust integrated solution is needed. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform® enables the creation of a virtual twin of a product and its related processes across its full lifecycle. The power of the virtual twin allows product teams to use much more than a virtual model of the design. Virtual testing (of materials and the full product), virtual the factory layout, and virtual manufacturing processes all save time and reduce waste. Engineers can simulate a product’s behavior and explore thousands of options to improve the product — before building the first unit. And, with data available in real time, teams can monitor and optimize resources more effectively.

3 Key Strategies

• Collaborate Across Departments: Successful implementation of circular design requires cross-functional collaboration between engineering, sustainability, supply chain, and marketing teams. By breaking down silos and fostering collaboration, companies can leverage diverse expertise and perspectives to drive innovation and minimize implementation challenges.
• Invest in Innovation: Embrace emerging technologies and materials that enable circularity, such as 3D printing, modular design, and bio-based materials. Investing in research and development (R&D) initiatives focused on circular design can yield long-term competitive advantages and demonstrate leadership in sustainability.
• Design for Disassembly: Incorporate design principles that support disassembly, repair, and reuse of products and components. Designing products with standardized interfaces, modular components, and easily separable materials extends the product lifespan, reduces waste, and enhances resource efficiency.

Circular Economy One Product at a Time  

By minimizing value leakage and building a more circular economy companies reap many benefits including:

• reducing development time up to 30%

lowering product development costs by up to 40% significantly lowering a product’s environmental footprint

Embracing circularity applying virtual twin technology allows consumer goods manufacturers to rethinking product development, lower costs and reach sustainability goals one product at a time.

Find out more. Watch the circularity video, read the sustainability ebook.