Designing & Circular products

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Designing with Recycled Plastics in Mind

One of the key goals of the INCREACE project is to increase the uptake of recycled plastics—especially within the electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) sector. Designers play a crucial role in this transition. By considering recycled materials early in the design process, they can directly influence the recyclability and circularity of future products.

Balancing Design Requirements

Designing with recycled content is not without its challenges. Designers must often balance competing requirements—such as viability, feasibility, and desirability—advocated by various stakeholders. That’s why it’s essential to quantify recyclability and recycled content in a clear and defendable way.

Introducing the Recycling Assessment Tool (RAT)

To support designers, the INCREACE team is developing the Recycling Assessment Tool (RAT). This tool will allow product developers to:

  • Estimate the recycling rate of a product or concept
  • Identify opportunities to improve this rate
    By giving designers concrete numbers and clear guidance, the RAT empowers them to advocate for circular design choices early in the development process.

Thijs Feenstra
t.feenstra@pezy.com
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Ronja Scholz
ronja.scholz@izm.fraunhofer.de
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Tapani Jokinen
tapani.jokinen@izm-extern.fraunhofer.de
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Max Marwede
max.marwede@izm.fraunhofer.de
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News & results

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Next steps

Promote adoption of the RAT and guidelines

Now that the Recycling Assessment Tool is live, we will focus on promoting its use among designers, developers, and manufacturers—helping them apply it in real design processes.

Collect feedback and improve tools

We will gather user feedback from industry partners to refine the design guidelines and ensure the tools remain practical, up-to-date, and widely applicable.

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Get in touch

For more info about the INCREACE project, please feel free to get in touch with us.

Projectcoordinators

Theresa Marie Aigner & Ronja Scholz

Address

Fraunhofer Institute for for Reliability and Microintegration IZM

Gustav-Meyer-Allee 25
13355 Berlin, Germany

Email address

info@increace-project.com