The future Regulation on Ecodesign for Sustainable Products will require to design the products for a circular economy, establishing new requirements for products to be more durable, reliable, reusable, upgradable, repairable, easier to maintain, refurbish and recycle, energy and resource-efficient. Final goal is to significantly improve product circularity, energy performance and other aspects of environmental sustainability.

Oceanwise project, within “Circularity Indicators & Tools” work package, led by Sustainn, has been analysing the current state-of-the-art regulations, standards, guidelines, methodologies and tools to design circular and sustainable generic products.

The most relevant findings from the deliverable are:

• A lot of references (legislations, standards, methodologies, guidelines, tools) are being developed and a great research activity has been detected recently related to how to design circular and sustainable products.
• No methodology or reference developed adhoc for EPS/XPS has been found at this moment that could be fully and directly applied to design alternative EPS/XPS products and applications in a structured way, considering the different potential applications. However, the proposal of Regulation on Ecodesign for Sustainable Products and recent specific guidelines for designing a circular and sustainable packaging should guide the development of circular and sustainable alternative EPS/XPS products and applications.
• As a general approach, main principles of circular economy have to be translated into specific design for X methodologies and tools, which should be integrated within design processes of EPS/XPS alternatives from their conceptual design stages. Typical Design for X approaches to use for the development of EPS/XPS alternatives are identified, which should be used and particularized depending on the type of business model related in each case (B2B, B2C), the type of application targeted (final consumer packaging, intermediate packaging, etc), the material chosen (technical, biological) and the existing infrastructures throughout the value chain (reverse logistics, waste management, recycling systems) in the target market.

Finally, this report provides recommendations for the development of a methodology for the design of alternative solutions for EPS/XPS products and applications, which was the target of Oceanwise project.

You can access the complete document by clicking on the following picture (deliverable front page).

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