Tag - Circular Economy

The vision of the circular economy speaks of closed cycles of resources and materials, of products that are maintained, repaired, reused, and recycled to stay in use for longer, and of getting the optimum out of the resources invested into a product over the longest period possible. This not only lessens the negative impact on our environment; it also opens up promising new business models. The essence of the circular economy lies in the smart combination of novel business models with mindful product design: products are designed to be reliable, durable, and repairable and distributed via “sharing” or “pay-per-service” models. Microelectronics can play a major role in improving the environmental performance of processes (e.g. state monitoring or tracking the flow of valuable resources).

The “Environmental and Reliability Engineering” department at Fraunhofer IZM hosts the “Eco-Design Learning Factory” a novel two-day training format that uses interactive and interdisciplinary activities to allow the participants to experience the evolution of a circular system and business model for a given product. The researchers of the Institute also offer research and advice on eco-designed products, lifecycle analyses, product reliability, and recent trends in legislation.