Optimise every life phase of your product

Mapping out the life cycle of your product (or service) can help you make your production process more sustainable, make better purchasing choices and reflect on your product’s life after use. After all, the choices you make in every life phase of your product will ultimately determine how big the environmental impact will be. From the raw materials you use and the product location you choose to logistics and the proximity of recyclingAny recovery operation through which waste, including organic waste, is reprocessed to become substances, materials or products that can be used for their initial function or other functions. facilities: every step matters if you truly want to make a difference.

Three major phases can be distinguished: the start, development and end phase of a product. Each of those phases comes with its specific challenges and opportunities. They should not be seen as a finite timeline but as a cycle: after its “demise”, a product can be reuseReuse designates all operations by which substances, materials or products that are not waste are used again in an identical way to their originally intended purpose.d as raw material to create a new product.

Circular services?

The circular economyThe circular economy is a restorative and regenerative economy. By maintaining the value of the products, materials and resources in the economy through smart product design, repurposing and/or shared use of products, it reduces the extraction of natural resources by using resources already present in the economy. doesn’t just apply to products but to services as well. Map out your product’s or service’s life cycle and evaluate the impact of all purchases and activities related to it. Even if you don’t have exact figures, it is important to be aware of the full impact of your business operations and to look for ways to make it more circular.

Get cracking!

Use the structure outlined above to map out the different life phases of your product. Be honest and critical about the impact generated by every phase and how it could be reduced. With every adjustment you naturally take into account its economic feasibility because circularityCircularity describes the quantity of materials managed in a closed loop. cannot be durable if your business is not financially healthy.

Do you need more insights or inspiration? Then take our self-test or check out our collection of interesting insights and cases.