Keeping Plastics In The Loop: Value of Circular Design
Plastic waste: out of sight != out of mind
6.3 billion metric tons, the equivalent of 45 million blue whales, that’s how much plastics people have thrown out as of 2015 ever since the plastics boom in the 1950s. Only about 14% of it gets recycled. The rest translates to a loss of $80–120 billion to the global economy every year.
Recycling small-format packaging is particularly tricky. Small parts like water bottle caps and sachets represent 3–4% of total world demand for plastics, yet almost all of them ends up as litter in the environment. They are either so small that they escape automatic sorting, or it simply isn’t cost effective to recycle them. The six massive garbage patches in the ocean around the world attest to this flawed system. The root cause is that these plastic packaging are designed for ease of use and disposal, but not necessarily of recycling.
The transition towards a circular economy requires us to rethink how we take, make, sell, use and dispose. Can we redesign our packaging such that it welcomes recycling and reuse? How can we reinvent our business models to preserve the value of the material, and retain more of the energy and labor inputs?
Circular design: a potential solution
On May 18th, IDEO launched the Circular Design Challenge on its community platform Open IDEO. In response, Open IDEO Montreal met for the very first time on July 15th, and I was invited to participate through the clean-tech agency Greien. Together, we explored what design thinking and principles of a circular economy can do to keep plastic packaging in the loop, and away from the ocean.
Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving. It can be applied to develop products, services, processes, and strategy. The six stages of design thinking are:

· Empathize
· Define
· Ideate
· Prototype
· Select
· Implement
After implementation, there’s a bonus stage of feedback — lather, rinse and repeat.
It may seem ambiguous at first glance, yet it’s a versatile, effective and repeatable protocol that yields grounded solutions. The method brings together desirability from a human perspective with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. Many designers, problem solvers and businesses have applied this school of thinking to nurture a circular economy, giving birth to the practice of Circular Design. In essence, circular economy envisions a system thoughtfully designed to keep products, components, and materials at their highest utility and value, thereby minimizing waste at each stage of the product life cycle. As shown in a McKinsey slideshow, it requires collaboration from all parties to sustain a truly circular economy.

Jet Engines: a case study in circular design
One field example is Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC), a leader in jet engine manufacturing. Their engine designs concern itself with each stage of life cycle, from material acquisition, manufacturing, testing to maintenance and end-of-life recycling.
What P&WC calls Eco Design, we call it Circular Design. Such an approach is not only an environmental necessity, but also a business necessity. In the medium term, P&WC’s End-of-Life Management mitigates risks associated with price volatility of raw materials such as aluminum and titanium ore. In the long run, continuously reusing recycled metals from retired engines improves supply stability. That’s precisely why the company has pledged to make all its engines fully recyclable by 2025.
Moving forward in the world of plastics
Arguably, designing plastic packaging versus jet engines are worlds apart. One is heavily incentivized by the high-value low-volume nature of the sector, while the other lives by economies of scale.
Plastic processors should adopt circular design to focus on enhancing product recyclability and cost structure over extending product lifetime. Take water bottle as an example, cost of raw material makes up over 60% of the product value. Meanwhile, cost of resins continues to climb up with increasing industrial production in emerging economies. What’s the way out? Well, incorporating recycled plastics is one way to stabilize cost structure and stay competitive despite price vitality.
The path to circular economy won’t be easy, nor fixed. It takes empathy, inventive thinking, iterative work as well as buy-in from multiple stake-holders to make circular economy a reality. Now is the time to pull out the post-it’s and put our heads together: how has existing circular designs inspired us, and how will we make packaging products that live more than one life?
You can tune into or even contribute to the conversation by checking out the online platform: https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/circular-design/brief.

