When we talk about durable materials, products, and services, what do we really mean? This episode unpacks the physical and emotional dimensions of durability and explores how this key design principle can help set circular business models up for long-term success.
When we talk about durable materials, products, and services, what do we really mean? This episode unpacks the physical and emotional dimensions of durability and explores how this key design principle can help set circular business models up for long-term success.
Would you like to know more about Back Market, the circular business model example mentioned in this episode? Listen to our episode 126: Changing the way we buy and use technology with Back Market.
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review or a comment on Spotify or YouTube. Your support helps us to spread the word about the circular economy.
Emma Elobeid 00:02
Welcome to the second in our three part season for the circular curious, in which we're talking around the edges, peeling off some layers and unraveling some common misconceptions around the circular economy. I'm Emma Elobeid, and in this episode, we'll be decoding what we really mean by durability.
Lou Waldegrave 00:20
Hi, I'm Lou, and I'd like to thank you in for inviting me back for the second in the season. Lovely to have you back. Cheers.
Emma Elobeid 00:27
So durability is one of those things that we kind of intuitively think of as being part of an important part of a circular economy, but I'm not sure that we've ever really articulated why. Yeah, that's
Lou Waldegrave 00:38
Yeah, that's so true. It's not something that tends to get much of its own ear time.
Emma Elobeid 00:42
And I think that's just because most of our conversations talk about circular systems in a much more integrated way, rather than separating out the individual strands.
Lou Waldegrave 00:52
I do think that's really important, though. Otherwise, it's kind of easy to fall into quite a siloed and actually linear way of thinking about solutions, you know, one by one.
Emma Elobeid 01:03
Yeah, yeah. That's very true. Nevertheless, on this occasion, we're shining a singular spotlight on durability, and in doing so, we'll try to pull apart exactly what it means at a material, product, system and actually behavioral level, and hopefully we'll come away with a better understanding of how durability fits into the big Circular Economy picture. Let's do it in so I suppose our starting point should be, what does durability even mean?
Lou Waldegrave 01:32
Clearly, something that's durable is something that will last as long as possible. That might be a pair of trainers, a piece of office furniture or a personal tech product.
Emma Elobeid 01:42
Yeah. And from a circular economy point of view, the idea being that the longer something lasts or the more use cycles it's capable of, the less pressure it places on planetary boundaries and natural resources.
Lou Waldegrave 01:55
There's a clear climate angle here, isn't there one? Because we can reduce production related emissions and pollution. And two, because we can retain those emissions associated with the production of the thing, whatever the thing happens to be, over a more prolonged product lifetime.
Emma Elobeid 02:14
Yeah, exactly that. And that second point is especially important because it's really easy to forget that admissions exist embodied carbon, as it's sometimes called, in the things which have already been made. So we need to make the most of that energy, rather than waste it. And leaning into this idea of longevity by redesigning products and materials in ways that keep them in use and out of landfill is a core component of a circular economy. Here's a neat little recap from an episode we did on repair earlier in the year.
Pippa Shawley 02:47
Imagine you've got a useful object, like a toaster that stopped working. Typically, we've got two options, fix it or replace it. Well, in a circular economy, we want goods and materials to stay in circulation at their highest value for as long as possible. By doing so, we keep finite materials in the economy and out of the environment.
Lou Waldegrave 03:09
The key thing that stands out for me here are those four magical words at their highest value, because to keep something in use in the way it was originally intended, it needs to be durable, but with the best will in the world, we sometimes have to accept that nothing lasts forever.
Emma Elobeid 03:28
Yeah, which is why it's so important to consider what happens once those multiple use cycles have been ultimately exhausted. What is the next most valuable use for this item? And crucially, what are the business models and systems we need to keep those cycles going?
Lou Waldegrave 03:45
Here's a clip of Joe Iles our design program lead with Ellen explaining this exact point through the everyday example of a mobile phone.
Joe Iles 03:54
I think a breakthrough moment for me on the recycling topic was around when someone described, take the phone example. How you might hear from some businesses, whether it's phones or other products that they want to collect it to effectively chop it up and reuse its materials again, which is a for some people, is a good is a place to start on circular economy. It gets their foot in the door, maybe, but you're losing all the all the value that you added to those materials in the first place by putting them together, the energy from people or machines that went into assembling something like a phone, the effort that went into effectively, like marketing it and shipping it getting out into someone's hands. So you're really stripping that away if you return something to the raw materials that it's made of.
Ellen MacArthur 04:48
Yeah, without question, the most value is in the phone itself. And any way you can keep that phone at its highest value for as long as possible, that would be the best option, profitability wise, actually, from a company perspective. Uh, as well as from a broader systemic perspective, but I think also the the components have value. So it's not just a phone as a phone, but it's the components within the phone that have value, more value than the materials that sit within those components. So you almost go through these loops of you know, the most value is the phone as a phone, then the next loop of value would be the components. And you, of course, you can't make a phone that's going to be, you know, technically, at the top of its game for 10 years, probably not even five years, and often not even three years. But you can design it so that when it stops being serviceable as a phone, you can then recover those materials so the most value lies in the phone and the remanufactured resale de componentization. But ultimately, you definitely want to be able to recover those materials and recycle them.
Emma Elobeid 05:48
I actually really love that. We just couldn't edit the seagulls out of that clip, and it's all the richer for it, that idea of nested value, so making sure that each element, once it's exhausted its first second and maybe even third and subsequent lives can keep flowing through the economy. Is really powerful, I think, and it all starts with durability.
Lou Waldegrave 06:10
Do you mind if I clarify something a little confusing?
Emma Elobeid 06:14
I mean, Lou, that's literally what this podcast episode is for. So, yeah, shoot!
Lou Waldegrave 06:18
Would it be fair to say that durability is a function rather than a solution?
Emma Elobeid 06:25
Yes, that is fair to say, and I'm really glad that you raised that point, because it's something that's come up for me before, too, and I expect for others, we tend to think of durability in the same vein as we might a circular business model, but really it's more like an underpinning design principle a starting point? Then, yeah, I think that's a nice way to think about it, because durability is just one of many considerations to think about when designing for circularity. Longevity might sit at the heart of a circular economy, but lasting longer isn't everything. In actual fact, there are plenty of cases in which designing a product to be durable without thinking about other important factors, things like safe chemicals or whether products are made from renewable inputs, can actually end up having adverse effects on nature or health.
Lou Waldegrave 07:15
Yeah, you say this was cookware sometimes, you know, like coatings added to non stick sauce spoons.
Emma Elobeid 07:21
Yeah, I've heard that story a lot, or kind of additives to make something could be a raincoat, could be a water bottle, withstand certain conditions or use frequencies.
Lou Waldegrave 07:31
There's more to durability than just links of service. Then much more. So let's go there. What are the other kinds of factors that come into play we're making sure that durability has the most impact.
Emma Elobeid 07:44
Well, where to start? I guess, given that we've already had Joe's example of the mobile phone feels like personal tech might be a good example to follow through on.
Lou Waldegrave 07:54
Well, it's something we all have a connection with, isn't it?
Emma Elobeid 07:57
Certainly, pretty universal. So I recently became aware of this Tiktok challenge or trend called the durability drop test, and as far as I can tell, it basically involves people filming themselves dropping brand new mobile phones from varying heights in order to assess how robust they are, whether the screen shatters, whether the cover chips, that kind of thing.
Lou Waldegrave 08:18
Okay, well, that's a hardcore take on toughness. Isn't it just? so maybe let's just park the questionable method and obvious wastage, because I don't think any of us would disagree that it is fundamentally important that a phone shouldn't smash at first drop true. But breakage isn't just visible, is it thinking about life limiting, software, device compatibility, battery degradation, all that kind of thing comes into account.
Emma Elobeid 08:44
Yeah, exactly. And kind of thinking about breakability in that way, or on that level, makes me think about this real tendency we have in a linear economic model towards things being deliberately designed to break after a period of time in order to encourage upgrades or replacement
Lou Waldegrave 09:01
planned obsolescence. It's a linear thing. Are we saying that extending the lifespan of a mobile phone isn't just about whether it can survive a fall? I
Emma Elobeid 09:11
think we're saying that it's not only its material functionality that keeps it in use. It's what business models are layered on top of that base layer of physical durability to keep it going and going again.
Lou Waldegrave 09:24
Resale is a key one, isn't it?
Emma Elobeid 09:26
Yeah, and really great example of how circular business models are taking flight in the consumer electronics space is back market, France's most valuable startup addressing one of the fastest growing solid waste streams in the world. Back market provides a platform for the sale of refurbished devices from smartphones and audio equipment to laptops and games consoles.
Lou Waldegrave 09:49
Here's CEO and co-founder, Thibaut in his own words.
Thibaud Hug de Larauze 09:54
Back Market's a marketplace dedicated to the sales of refurbished products and. It's been created eight years ago. It's operating in 17 countries, so in Europe, in the US and also in Asia. Now, for the past two years, the idea behind back market is to scale the circular economy around tech product. Give an alternative to people when they want to consume a tech product, to actually not buy a new product and buy a refurbished or used product.
Emma Elobeid 10:27
On average, back market reports that its refurbished smartphone uses 91.3% fewer raw materials, 86.4% less water, and generates 91.6% fewer carbon emissions than a brand new option.
Lou Waldegrave 10:43
Well, that's a pretty compelling environmental case for resale.
Emma Elobeid 10:47
Yeah, and they hit a valuation of $5.7 billion back in 2022 so I'd say the economics are going pretty well for them too. Wow,
Lou Waldegrave 10:56
five unicorns. So we've talked a little bit about this idea of durability as a launch pad for circular business models?
Emma Elobeid 10:57
Yeah, and remembering too, something I don't think we mentioned earlier, that analysis shows there is a $700 billion opportunity in circular business models.
Lou Waldegrave 11:14
Huge. So beyond resale, what are some other ways durability is helping to create value?
Emma Elobeid 11:21
Well, durability also intersects with repair models in a big way, but there are complexities.
Lou Waldegrave 11:27
Well, we love complexity here at the Foundation. How so?
Emma Elobeid 11:31
Well, repairing things, whether it's a coffee machine, could be a piece of clothing, an office chair or a child's toy, helps them last longer. But if durability hasn't been designed in right at the beginning, then businesses pursuing repair models could find themselves locked into endless and costly loops of fixing, which obviously has a financial impact in labor, reverse logistics, etc,
Lou Waldegrave 11:56
that would then have a knock on impact on things like customer satisfaction, I guess?
Emma Elobeid 12:01
Yeah, exactly. So I think what we're saying is repair without durability skews the effort to impact ratio of circular business models, and more than that, the long term success of these models almost relies on products and materials being designed to be durable from the outset.
Lou Waldegrave 12:19
So what we're starting to say here is that durability isn't something that sits in a silo.
Emma Elobeid 12:25
I mean, I think at this point we can say nothing in a circular economy sits in a silo.
Lou Waldegrave 12:30
And if memory serves me correctly, some of our work in the fashion space is a great demonstration of this.
Emma Elobeid 12:36
Yeah, it really is. And when the fashion team first started to look at what it would mean to transform the fashion industry from linear to circular. They focused at first on jeans, iconic jeans, exactly. It's a bit like the phone example, isn't it? We've all got them.
Lou Waldegrave 12:54
But how do you even measure the durability of jeans? Like, it's not like you can drop them off a tall building.
Emma Elobeid 13:01
No quite the requirements of measuring durability are pretty different to a mobile device. So there's various elements, including the number of home laundries they can withstand. Some of the learnings that came out of that first product level project, the jeans redesign, which has actually since evolved into our current demonstrator the fashion remodel is that it isn't always as easy to deliver on physical durability alongside everything else. So for example, in achieving that overall vision of a circular economy for fashion in which garments are designed to be used more, made to be made again and made from safe and recycled or renewable inputs, there are trade offs along the way.
Lou Waldegrave 13:43
It's like what we were saying earlier with the example of non stick frying pans, exactly. But for jeans, I guess the long term vision is to get to a place where there are no trade offs, but it's hard when there is no single or simple solution.
Emma Elobeid 13:58
Yeah, it's it's back to that complexity, isn't it? And also remembering that we're still very much in the messy middle of this circular economy transition. You know, all of this stuff is being worked through by brands and businesses in real time.
Lou Waldegrave 14:12
Yeah, but surely this is where innovation comes in.
Emma Elobeid 14:15
Yeah, and I think things like biomaterials, which have the potential to be physically robust and help to regenerate natural systems are really, really exciting, and potentially could help us bridge this durability business model gap. So some of those solution pathways do absolutely exist, but we need more investment to keep fueling that innovation.
Lou Waldegrave 14:37
Which is a very exciting space to watch.
Emma Elobeid 14:41
I'd like to stay with jeans, if I may.
Lou Waldegrave 14:42
Well, we already know they're a good demonstrator product.
Emma Elobeid 14:46
They're also an excellent example of another strand of durability that gets less attention when we talk about longevity, because durability isn't just physical, it's emotional too. So physical durability can. Be measured in technical terms. So in the case of genes, that's things like tear and tensile strength, dimensional stability, abrasion resistance...
Lou Waldegrave 15:09
How would you go about quantifying emotional durability, then?
Emma Elobeid 15:14
This is a really, really fascinating topic, because emotional durability isn't just about withstanding multiple wares or multiple washes, is about the item's ability to retain its esthetic and emotional desirability to a user or multiple users over time.
Lou Waldegrave 15:32
That's so true. Jeans can really tell a story, can't they?
Emma Elobeid 15:37
If jeans could talk! I actually really love this idea that jeans or any item of clothing don't just hold the embodied emissions that we talked about earlier, so the emissions associated with the materials, components and energy used to bring them to market, but also the memories that we make while wearing them. Super
Lou Waldegrave 15:56
interesting stuff, although it does make me wonder, how does this idea of emotional durability apply to something a little more inanimate, like a piece of personal tick, for example?
Emma Elobeid 16:07
Yeah, well, that's exactly the thing. I think it's always going to be harder to embed any kind of emotional attachment for, you know, hardware or household items. When you think about a personal device, for example, the value seems to be much more about the functionality of that device and what it holds than its physicality, per se, laptop stickers notwithstanding. That said, I think there are definitely other ways that brands can build in experiences of desirability and stickability, through marketing and loyalty programs that kind of thing. So going back to back market, they know that taking the time to really understand the social, emotional and cultural motivations of their customers can lead to a more meaningful relationship over the long term.
Thibaud Hug de Larauze 16:52
It's, it's, it's a necessary work to not only translate and localize, but really grasp the full cultural aspects, sometimes difference that exists in every single market, while keeping, you know, a strong focus on what our core message is. So it's difficult, it's, you know, it's a job. We need talents for for that. But when we push that little extra effort and really, really focus on understanding the local consumer, what they're studying for, what's their relationship to tech in the first place? What their relationship is to the refurbished industry category, if there is one. And understanding, you know, the cultural traits, the moments that matter. Once we do that extra push, then we have messaging campaign that connects much better, and we see results in terms of business what
Lou Waldegrave 17:47
we're almost getting at there is that by using circular business models to extend a product's life, we're also extending the endurance of the business model itself.
Emma Elobeid 17:58
Yeah, kind of trippy when you start thinking about it. So let's say you start with physical durability, there's always going to be an emotional story attached to that. So a durable coffee machine means more morning moment savored. A durable family tent is one that can be passed down to the grandchildren. A durable set of headphones, more means more music and so on and so on. But beyond that first durable step, it's the circular business models itself, repair, resale, remanufacturing that keep them in life.
Lou Waldegrave 18:34
So the relationship between durability and circular business models is coming out as key, isn't it really key.
Emma Elobeid 18:41
This came out again in another conversation that Colin had a while ago with repair platform SOJO’s co-Founder Josephine Phillips. So Josephine talked about how if brands were to design products to last longer in the first place, it would help to incentivize both durability and repair for businesses.
Josephine Phillips 19:00
Nobody has ever sort of centralised that knowledge when it comes to data. And I think what's really important is us being able to say to a brand, this is how many times this strap snagged on this top, this is how many people requested it to be repaired that obviously needs to be manufactured for more durability, and they will be incentivized to manufacture for durability more if they are actually paying for those repairs. So we would really want brands to offer free repairs to their customers, because we think that's what makes it really accessible. That's what sort of will create more customer adoption, and in doing so, what that allows us, they want to reduce the amount of repairs they're paying for as much as possible, obviously, because it's a capital society, and sort of it flex their bottom line and and so what's really exciting with us being able to say, do not create those genes where they can then rip along the Thrive really easily on that seam, or patch the seam, or do it in this way that actually does manufacture for durability, so you won't lose money on the repairs. And I think that's really exciting, because that's bringing circularity to the fashion industry from both the end of life and also the beginning part as well.
Lou Waldegrave 19:54
So durability can help keep the brand cost of repair low, while also. Helping to address customer trust around garment quality.
Emma Elobeid 20:04
Yeah, and I also especially loved what she said about the integration of the two approaches. So by optimizing circularity at the start of the design process, businesses can make the second and subsequent lives more valuable to the customer and, crucially, more valuable for the brand, win, win all round. And this was something that was also mentioned in another episode with Europe's largest circular fashion hub, Advanced Clothing Solutions, or ACS.
Andrew Rough 20:33
And the fundamental DNA of the business is garment longevity, because once you make the investment in the inventory you want to get as high utilization of that inventory as possible.
Emma Elobeid 20:45
Andrew, who's ACS' CEO, by the way, goes on to explain how durability is helping to enable the financial success of their clothing rental program.
Andrew Rough 20:55
It's a very different dynamic to the traditional linear model, because it's all about asset utilization, it's changing clothing from being a current asset or inventory to actually thinking of it as a fixed asset and having many uses over its lifetime. Once you get past the rental position of five to six rentals, it's more profitable than the traditional linear model. Now, five to six rentals might sound a lot, but when I tell you that we've rented out some dresses over 30 times, we've rented some trousers nearly up to 100 times, then that shows you the opportunity that there is on the rental platform.
Lou Waldegrave 21:42
What he's saying there really makes this point about durability as a kind of supercharger of circular business model success for us, doesn't it?
Emma Elobeid 21:50
Really does. It struck me at some point that these different levels of durability that we've talked about so you've got material and product, physical and emotional, are helping to actually enable something bigger.
Lou Waldegrave 22:03
Is this where sales get a little meta.
Emma Elobeid 22:06
It does happen with me sometimes I did warn you last episode, but yes, I think if our ultimate goal is to get circular business models to a point of cultural and commercial stickiness, which we already know will require actions at all scales of the system. You could call that durability.
Lou Waldegrave 22:24
Yeah, I like that. We tend to talk in terms of from niche to norm or mainstreaming, but endurance is a real ring to it as well.
Emma Elobeid 22:33
Yeah, I thought so. And it also made me think about what kind of behavioral durability qualities we might need to enable Circular Economy success. So things like what kind of mental toughness is required to make the case for a circular economy in a business, what kind of resolve is needed to take something from pilot to practice, and even what new mindsets might we need to gain to embed these new ways for good?
Lou Waldegrave 22:59
I think what this episode has taught us is that durability is more important and maybe even more complicated than either of us realise.
Emma Elobeid 23:07
Starting out isn't everything. It's been a journey.
Lou Waldegrave 23:10
It certainly has but a fun one.
Emma Elobeid 23:13
Thank you so much for joining me on it, Lou, let's do it again soon.
Lou Waldegrave 23:18
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Circular Sconomy Show. Join us next time when we'll be discussing whether the circular economy can help us adapt to climate change at the same time as helping us to tackle it. Until then, we'll see you soon.