To what extent does “Design for reuse” meet the general strategic goals of a Circular Economy model?

In this video Ester van der Voet, from Leiden University, elaborates on this question.

Key points:

• The design of reusable products can save resources by preventing the manufacturing of more new products.
• However, there are trade-off’s: Products need to be built more robustly, often with more material volume. They also need to be transported, and in many cases cleaned before being redistributed.
• The more reuse cycles a product can go through the higher its environmental advantage will be over a non-reusable alternative.
• Likewise, with products which are intensively used without further transport and processing, the advantage of the reusable product – from a CE perspective – will increase the longer the product remains in use.