Sustainable management: How life cycle assessment and ecodesign pave the way to the circular economy

A life cycle assessment attempts to identify and quantify the environmental impact of a product or service along its life cycle. It can focus on different target groups, for example on the life cycle phase under consideration or the environmental impact under investigation, and accordingly have different levels of detail.

How the life cycle assessment has developed

Originally, life cycle assessments were used by companies to make economic decisions. In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, they were a means of optimizing energy and waste within a company.

In the 1990s, the first standardization efforts were made, which resulted in the creation of an ISO standard for life cycle assessments. Since then, this standard has been continuously developed, expanded and used in guidelines and regulations worldwide.

With the planned introduction of the Digital Product Passport by the EU Commission, the standards and regulations developed in the past are to be digitized, harmonized and unified in order to promote reduction strategies with regard to greenhouse gas emissions with the 1.5°C target and to establish circular business models on a broad scale.

Ecodesign: solutions for durable and recyclable products

Ecodesign is a key component in achieving climate targets. Life cycle assessment offers the opportunity to identify priorities for environmentally optimized product design and to weigh up options for improvement.

This consideration is necessary as conflicts can arise within the manufacturing phase, usage phase and end of life, depending on the design decision. On the one hand, the focus is on longevity and therefore robustness, repairability or upgradeability. On the other hand, the use of the product or individual components, parts and materials and their recycling should be ensured.

This will make product design more challenging in the future, and economic and technical conflicts of interest may arise. Companies must manage these potential conflicts of interest by making ecologically sound design decisions and using life cycle-oriented business models.

In the manufacturing phase, it makes sense to use used or recycled components or to enable the use of recycled materials. Reducing the variety of materials and material composites is also highly relevant in this phase. In the utilization phase, repairability plays a major role, which can be improved, for example, through modular design or condition monitoring.

Extending the service life by providing software updates or increasing robustness also plays a role here. Typical failure mechanisms such as moisture or thermal and mechanical stress should be addressed here. At the end of the product’s life, other factors are relevant for eco-design. Non-destructive disassembly of components and assemblies or the separation of recycling-specific material fractions (e.g. iron, aluminum, copper, cobalt, as well as plastics, resins or glass) are essential here.

Companies benefit from new knowledge and methodological expertise

As part of the ZirkuPro project, the project team carried out extensive training courses and workshops to create a knowledge base on the subject of life cycle assessment among the industrial partners and to enable them to carry out their own life cycle assessments in accordance with standards in the future.

Extensive life cycle assessments of the partner products were also drawn up within the project and the appropriate eco-design principles were derived in each case with regard to mechanical design, reliability and durability, repair and recycling, as well as electrical design.

“Drawing up the life cycle assessment as part of our pilot project has given us valuable insights into the environmental impact of our products. Particularly surprising was the potential in the area of electronics, from which we have derived valuable findings that we will now implement together with our electronics development department in order to create even more sustainable solutions,” says Tobias van der Beck from Miele.

Ecological and economic advantages

The it’s OWL project ‘ZirkuPro’ shows how companies can actively contribute to the circular economy and at the same time gain innovative impetus for their product development. The combination of life cycle assessment and targeted eco-design offers not only ecological but also economic benefits.