Abstract
A circular economy moves from the current linear model of production and consumption, i.e., the take-make-use-dispose model, to one that uses resources efficiently, avoids pollution, and creates triple bottom line (i.e., economic, environmental, and social) sustainability benefits. The transition from a linear to circular economy needs actions to facilitate resource recovery, extend the effective use-life of resources, and improve the productivity of resource utilization in the economy. Product design decisions set and limit possibilities for future activities throughout the entire life cycle. A comprehensive transformation of current design practices is needed to adapt to the new model of production and consumption. However, circular product design is yet to become mainstream in design curricula in higher education and workforce development.
Building from a synthesis of literature related to circular product design principles, this paper identifies underlying themes that may be integrated into design curricula. Two distinct qualitative analysis methods were used: First, a Collaborative Thematic Analysis to assign codes to the source principles and subsequently use them to develop descriptive themes. Second, a Natural Language Processing approach to vectorize the same set of design principles and cluster them based on similarity. Ultimately, the resulting themes from both approaches are compared to each other. While the design principles target practitioners, these themes can teach the fundamentals of circular economy, including how to think about design decisions in a larger circular economy system. Designers will need this fundamental understanding to make use of the specific circularity principles. Future work will further refine the themes identified here and through collaboration with academia and industry narrow the set to provide a foundation for circular economy and circular product design education.
