Information sheet 3

Overview

Everything we have is from the Earth, can we ensure that we return everything we borrow? How do we humans make things? Can we understand the process we use to make things, and see if we can either reuse these resources or ensure they are disposed of carefully so that they return to the Earth? Can we make sure that what we take from Earth is used wisely and to its fullest potential? In this session, students learn about how everything we make has a lifecycle, from its beginning as resources and its end as waste. They learn about the five phases of any product’s lifecycle and the activities that happen in each phase. They don’t learn the sustainability strategies just yet, they discover problems in each phase of the product lifecycle and propose solutions.

Summary of main ideas and topics

The big question How are things made? How can we ensure what we take from Earth is utilized fully and returned?

Other guiding question The birth to death of a product - Lifecycle of a product Lifecycle analysis and lifecycle thinking Phases of the lifecycle Linear vs circular economy

Session specific learning objective

Describe the lifecycle of an object and the different phases of a lifecycle using examples. Differentiate between a circular and linear lifecycle with an example and identify the advantages and disadvantages of both Create a product lifecycle for an object by collecting information from it’s manufacturers, people who use it and those who handle its disposal. Identify issues in each phase of the lifecycle and suggest alternative solutions

Content e aboration The birth to de th of product - Lifecycle of product

Lifecyc e ana ysis and ifecyc e thinkin The scientific process of underst nding wh t imp cts occur s result of the m teri ls th t move through our economy is c lled Life Cycle An lysis. Absolutely everything th t is cre ted goes through series of life cycle st ges, from m teri l extr ction through to end of life. It brings new insights bout how ction in one st ge of the product life cycle m y le d to upstre m or downstre m effects f r w y from the point of ction, perh ps in v stly dist nt geogr phic l loc tions s well. (Indi LCA) Life cycle thinking, on the other h nd, is “w y of thinking th t includes the economic, environment l, nd soci l consequences of product or process over its entire life” ( s defined by the United N tions Life Cycle Initi tive). How it is different from the previously mentioned system thinking is th t lifecycle thinking is more det iled nd looks t the movement of resources specific lly. (Ac roglu, 2018) It is essenti lly the extr cted thinking tool built off of the knowledge cre ted by the scientific investig tions of LCA. It does not require n expert with deep knowledge of the science — b sic level underst nding is enough — but it is thinking nd decision support tool th t exp nds the perspective of view from one dimension (such s w ste or m teri ls or tr nsport) to the entire life of the product, ll the w y b ck to the extr ction of r w m teri ls nd ll the w y into the future of potenti l end of life re lities. According to M y Ac r glou, who’s “Guide to lifecycle thinking” h s been used s the source of much of the content in this lesson, “LCA d t should lw ys be for the entire life of the core function l delivery of your product. M ny comp nies only focus on their p ck ging, which is often much lower imp ct ren th n the ctu l product. The s me c n be s id for the end-of-life focus th t m ny design te ms t ke when trying to cre te so-c lled ‘eco product’. This n rrow view often le ds to uninformed decisions, incre sed environment l imp cts, nd unintended consequences ”

Phases of the ifecyc e The five ph ses of the lifecycle of product re m teri l extr ction, m nuf cturing, distribution, use nd dispos l. (Ac roglu, 2018)

Raw materia Extraction Manufacturing Packaging and Transportation Usage End of Life

Phases of product lifecycle

Extraction Everything comes from nature at some point, so all materials can be traced back to where and how they were extracted. Whether it’s stuff pulled out of the ground, cut down, or shorn off a sheep’s back, we need to change and often destroy ecosystems that would have otherwise been providing the service of clean air and water. So from a life cycle perspective, we always go back to what the land was being used for before we extracted the materials and then evaluate the method of extraction. Often, an ecosystem service was being provided for free by nature but is no longer able to do so as a result of the extraction. This about all the different ways we get materials from nature! Manufacturing This is where we take the extracted materials and transform them into usable base materials, products, and goods — the tree into wood chips that are then bleached and chemically irritated, heat rolled, and made into paper, which is then lined with a plastic film and turned into a coffee cup, for example. All activities in the manufacturing stage are accounted for, and the inputs and outputs (such as the input of energy and output of Co2, or the input of the tree and the outputs of sawdust and paper) are identified and explored for their positive and egative impacts to the biosphere. Manufacturing includes the manufacturing of extracted materials into usable ones and the possessing of multiple materials into usable goods. Packaging and Transportation This happens at every stage of the products life, and to be honest, is often where people assume the biggest ecological impacts occur— but it’s usually not when you compare all the activities across the entire life of the product. Packaging is a real conundrum, as it’s often overdone as well as made with materials that don’t fit back into nature well; however, sometimes the loss of the product is greater from a LCA perspective than the loss of the packaging. Like loose leaf salad greens: if packed in a plastic cushion bag, we often have way less product loss, which has a net ecological gain. Transport is much the same — sometimes it makes sense to transport things across the world rather than grow it locally if the climatic conditions do not allow for it (like tomatoes being grown in a hothouse with loads of energy inputs in a cold climate vs being shipped from a warmer location, the latter is often better when everything is taken into consideration)

Use Phase This is where we buy the product, take it home, use it, maybe wash it, perhaps add extra things to it over its life, and then when it is no longer desired, functional, or fashionable, it moves on to the final stage of its life. The thing to identify in the use phase is if the products are ‘active’, meaning they have to be plugged in or washed, for example. This will mean that the use phase often dominates the life cycle impacts of these types of products, as it is the connection to a bigger system as a core requirement of its functioning that draws constant impacts. Products that are ‘passive’, meaning they don’t need any extra inputs throughout their life (like a chair or a book), often have lower use phase impacts and instead are dominated by manufacturing or material extraction (and of course, end of life)

End of Lif The end-of-life impacts vary dramatically based on the options that are available in the location and the way the product was designed. There are basically 4 main EoL options: landfill and littering (where we lose values from the system and create negative externalities), recycling with degrees of remanufacturing, reuse, repair, etc) and incineration (which replaces fossil fuel production, but does mean we lose all the materials from the system). Each has its own degree of impact and emotional triggers. People hate waste, and so assume that end of life is the bigger part of the product’s impacts, but in many cases, it’s often not the biggest. In saying this though, it’s incredibly important to know that all waste is a tragedy, and most humans design systems that lose value over time so we end up with built-in wastefulness through disposability. All EoL issues must be addressed at the start of the product life, not the end.

Making a lif y l Choose the product and a quantity of it (one jar of pickles) Define the scope - Will you cover the entire lifecycle or just a few stages? Next comes identifying all the different activities that occur across the main life cycle stages, starting with mat rial xtra tion, identifying all the things that have to happen in order to get the raw materials out of nature. This can be quite detailed for complex products (a cell phone that has 50 different materials in it) Once you have a list of the main ingredients used, you can start to explore the other phases of the product’s life, such as product manufa turing. How are the extracted materials processed and transported around the world? What stages do they go through in order to go from raw to usable state? What inputs are required and what outputs come about as a result? For example, there are many different ways of transforming bamboo into a usable industrial material. If it’s used in a more natural way so as spoon, there are far less manufacturing stages than if it were being turned into a fabric, which often requires many chemical processes in order to do so. You can discover many of these things with a quick internet search to help build your knowledge bank on material processing. After you have identified the materials and the activities from raw to usable states, start to build the map of the product’s manufacturing process. Here there are often loads of transporting and packaging activities to include. Then you move onto the us phase, where you consider all the different use-case scenarios that are likely to occur. Is the product active or passive? What are the use phase inputs, such as water for washing or energy for charging? Try to calculate what the per functional unit use impact is, meaning if you want to get one cup of boiled water, how much energy is required for say an electric kettle, a stove top pot in electric and gas, or an instant water boiler? It’s here in the use phase that you will notice just how much the design decisions influence the impacts of the products during its usable life. Use phase can include the retail and sales environment as well, but the main impacts occur in the relationship between the design and the human interaction with this.

After use, map the potential end of life options and again draw links between the materials used and the most likely ways they would be discarded. You will find that the way things are assembled often directly impacts the way they are treated at end of life. For example, some cell phones are designed to lock the consumer out with special patented screw heads, yet they will have a warning about not disposing of the battery in the normal trash — but you can’t get into the phone to remove the battery!

Linear vs circular economy (For discussion 3.1) A circular economy is fundamentally different from a linear economy. To put it simply, in a linear economy we mine raw materials that we process into a product that is thrown away after use. In a circular economy, we close the cycles of all these raw materials. Closing these cycles requires much more than just recycling. It changes the way in which value is created and preserved, how production is made more sustainable and which business models are used. A view point is that the current way of thinking about product life cycles is fundamentally linear because there is a raw material extraction phase, a production phase, a use phase and an end-of-life phase. If a life cycle was truly circular, there would be no end-of-life. If there is

“final disposal” of a product, such as in a landfill or by incineration, then the system is not circular. Even recycling often results in either downgraded material (referred to as downcycling) or less than 100% of material recycled, which does not represent a perfectly circular economy.

In fact, if life cycles are truly circular, there would be no raw material extraction. There would simply be the recapture of materials throughout the supply chain and the value chain.

Circular economy principles also highlight the ability of organizations to recapture materials through methods like take-back programs that reduce the need to extract new resources.

Example lifecycle map, expanding end of life options by Leyla Acaro lu

To move toward circular economy, products must be designed from inception to optimize the ability to recapture materials when the product has completed its first use phase and ensure second, third or even infinite use phases. Some suggest that the two phases of EoL and material extraction need to be merged into one phase called “material recovery” to make the depiction of a life cycle cyclical. The goal of life cycle mapping is to get a more comprehensive understanding of the entire life of the product and then use this to compare different functional deliveries for design changes that result in more effective products that have considered the full life cycle impacts.

Get this right, and you are much closer to designing products that fit within the circular economy.

Further reading https: kenniskaarten.hetgroenebrein.nl en knowledge-map-circular-economy how-is-acircular-economy-different-from-a-linear-economy http: us.wsp-pb.com blogs green-scene lca breaking-free-from-linear-thinking-life-cycleassessment-and-circular-economy https: www.indialca.com https: kenniskaarten.hetgroenebrein.nl en knowledge-map-circular-economy how-is-acircular-economy-different-from-a-linear-economy https: youtu.be BiS oeqb_V https: www.youtube.com watch?v=qAxj6WvLnWk

Material for class activity 3 - How are Mrs Prakash's pickles made?

This is connected to the previous story of Mrs Preetha and her small business. If the story was used as is for the previous activity, the following lifecycle can be used as is for teaching. If the story was edited, the teacher would have to create a lifecycle

The following is a lifecycle of Mrs. Preetha’s pickles, highlighting the stages of the product lifecycle and including smaller details.

Acaroglu, L. (2018, March 9). A guide to life cycle thinking. Medium. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from http ://medium.com/di ruptive-de ign/quick-guide-to- u tainable-de ign trategie -6 1765a86fb8. ::india LCA:: ::India LCA:: (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2022, from http ://www.indialca.com/