Interview: practitioners on circular design & product-as-a-service

The global circular economy market reached $339.8 billion in 2024, with the United States accounting for nearly 28% of that figure, yet practitioners working at the frontlines of design for disassembly report that the real challenges lie not in market potential but in the granular engineering decisions that determine whether a product can actually be recovered, refurbished, and reintegrated into production cycles. In conversations with sustainability directors, product engineers, and circular economy consultants across the US, a consistent theme emerges: the hidden trade-offs between aesthetic appeal, manufacturing efficiency, and end-of-life recoverability represent the defining tension of modern circular design practice.

Why It Matters

The imperative for circular design has never been more acute. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's 2024 Circularity Gap Report, only 7.2% of the global economy operates within circular principles, representing a decline from 9.1% in 2018. In the United States specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that 292.4 million tons of municipal solid waste were generated in 2023, with only 32.1% diverted through recycling or composting. The remaining two-thirds—nearly 200 million tons annually—flows into landfills or incinerators, representing not just an environmental burden but an extraordinary loss of embedded material value estimated at $120 billion.

Product-as-a-service (PaaS) models offer a compelling economic framework for addressing this challenge. McKinsey's 2024 analysis of the circular economy in North America found that PaaS arrangements can increase manufacturer profit margins by 25-40% over traditional sales models while reducing material input requirements by up to 50% through extended product lifespans and systematic component recovery. The US market for PaaS models grew 23% year-over-year in 2024, reaching $47 billion across sectors including industrial equipment, office furniture, consumer electronics, and commercial lighting.

Yet practitioners consistently report that the economic promise of circularity frequently collides with the physical realities of product architecture. Design for disassembly (DfD)—the practice of engineering products to be efficiently taken apart for repair, refurbishment, or materials recovery—remains the critical enabler that determines whether circular business models succeed or fail. Without products that can actually be disassembled cost-effectively, the entire circular value proposition collapses.

Key Concepts

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR): A policy framework increasingly adopted across US states that shifts end-of-life management obligations from municipalities to manufacturers. As of January 2025, twelve states have enacted comprehensive EPR legislation for packaging, with Colorado, Oregon, California, and Maine leading implementation. EPR creates direct financial incentives for manufacturers to design products that are easier to recover and recycle, as their fees are typically modulated based on recyclability and recycled content.

Regenerative Design: An approach that goes beyond merely minimizing harm to actively restoring natural systems through material choices and production processes. Regenerative design principles inform material selection decisions, favoring bio-based inputs from regeneratively managed agricultural systems and designing products that can safely biodegrade at end-of-life or be perpetually recycled without quality degradation. US practitioners increasingly distinguish between "less bad" sustainable design and genuinely regenerative approaches.

Material Passport Systems: Digital documentation that travels with products throughout their lifecycle, recording material composition, fastener types, disassembly procedures, and component condition. The EU's Digital Product Passport requirements taking effect in 2027 are driving US manufacturers serving European markets to implement these systems, creating spillover benefits for domestic circular operations. Material passports enable automated sorting and informed refurbishment decisions.

Circular Supply Chain Architecture: The network of reverse logistics providers, refurbishment centers, materials processors, and secondary markets required to capture value from returned products. Unlike linear supply chains optimized purely for one-way flow, circular supply chains must accommodate variable timing, uncertain volumes, and heterogeneous product conditions while maintaining economic viability.

Modular Product Architecture: A design philosophy that structures products as assemblies of discrete, replaceable modules with standardized interfaces. Modularity enables targeted repairs, component-level upgrades, and selective harvesting of still-functional elements while allowing degraded modules to be separately processed. The trade-off involves balancing modularity's circularity benefits against manufacturing complexity and potential performance compromises.

What's Working and What Isn't

What's Working

Standardized Fastener Protocols: Leading practitioners have developed internal fastener standards that dramatically reduce disassembly time. Interface, the commercial flooring company, reports that their shift to standardized, tool-free fastening systems reduced carpet tile installation and removal time by 40% while enabling 96% of returned products to enter refurbishment streams rather than downcycling. Similarly, HP's cartridge return program benefits from fastener designs that allow automated disassembly, processing over 900 million cartridges since 1991 with 75% of returned materials flowing back into new products.

Lease-Based Revenue Models in Commercial Equipment: The commercial office furniture sector demonstrates that PaaS models can achieve genuine circularity at scale. Steelcase's "Steelcase Rental" program maintains ownership of products throughout multiple use cycles, with the company reporting that lease-return furniture achieves 92% material recovery rates compared to 23% for equivalent products entering municipal waste streams. The key enabler is furniture designed specifically for disassembly, using reversible joints and material-consistent components that don't require separation.

Regional Refurbishment Networks: Practitioners emphasize that successful circular programs require geographically distributed processing capacity. Caterpillar's "Cat Reman" program operates twelve remanufacturing facilities across North America, enabling returned components to be processed within 500 miles of most customer locations. This geographic distribution reduces reverse logistics costs to <8% of product value, making refurbishment economically competitive with new component production.

What Isn't Working

Adhesive Dependency in Consumer Electronics: Despite public commitments to circularity, major consumer electronics manufacturers continue to rely heavily on adhesives and specialized fasteners that make repair and disassembly prohibitively time-consuming. iFixit's 2024 repairability analysis found that the average smartphone requires 45 minutes of skilled labor for battery replacement due to adhesive barriers, rendering third-party repair economically unviable for most devices. This design choice directly undermines product longevity and materials recovery.

Material Complexity in Multi-Layer Packaging: Flexible packaging presents persistent challenges for circular design. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition reports that <15% of flexible packaging in the US achieves actual recycling, with multi-layer structures combining polymers, adhesives, and barrier materials remaining effectively unrecyclable despite technical recyclability claims. Practitioners note that the performance requirements driving material complexity (moisture barriers, oxygen exclusion, puncture resistance) have proven difficult to meet with mono-material alternatives.

Misaligned Incentive Structures: Despite growing EPR adoption, practitioners report that current fee structures inadequately penalize products designed for disposal. California's EPR framework, for example, modulates fees based on recyclability, but the differential between easily recyclable and difficult-to-recycle products remains too small to materially influence design decisions. One packaging engineer noted that switching to a genuinely recyclable mono-material structure would increase production costs by 12%, while the EPR fee reduction would offset only 2% of that cost.

Key Players

Established Leaders

Patagonia operates the most mature circular apparel program in the US, with their Worn Wear initiative processing over 130,000 garments annually for resale and their design standards requiring all products to be repairable with basic tools. Their material choices prioritize recyclable mono-fiber textiles over blended fabrics.

Caterpillar leads in heavy equipment remanufacturing, with Cat Reman processing components worth over $1 billion annually. Their design for remanufacturing standards have been incorporated into new product development since 1973, with 40% of total component volume now designed for multiple service lives.

Philips pioneered circular lighting through their "Light as a Service" model, retaining ownership of fixtures and bulbs while selling illumination. Their circular design principles include standardized LED modules, tool-free access panels, and materials passports tracking every component.

Interface transformed commercial flooring through modular carpet tile design and closed-loop recycling. Their ReEntry program recovers 12 million pounds of carpet annually, with 100% of recovered material flowing back into new products.

Steelcase leads in circular office furniture, with products designed for disassembly using only common hand tools. Their product take-back programs recover materials at 8x the rate of conventional furniture disposal.

Emerging Startups

Rheaply provides a software platform for enterprise asset exchange, enabling organizations to circulate used equipment and materials internally before disposing. Based in Chicago, they've facilitated over $50 million in recovered asset value since 2019.

Closed Loop Partners' Center for the Circular Economy operates the NextGen Consortium, developing circular solutions for food service packaging with participants including Starbucks, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola.

Sourceful offers a procurement platform connecting brands with suppliers of recycled and recyclable packaging materials, with verification systems ensuring material claims match reality.

Lomi has developed consumer-scale organic waste processing technology, converting food scraps into soil amendment within 24 hours and addressing the organic fraction that contaminates recyclable streams.

Material Return provides reverse logistics infrastructure specifically designed for circular economy applications, with sorting technology that identifies materials and routes them to appropriate processors.

Key Investors & Funders

Closed Loop Partners manages over $500 million in circular economy investments across venture capital, private equity, and catalytic capital strategies, with portfolio companies spanning materials recovery, reuse systems, and circular design.

Circulate Capital focuses on preventing ocean plastic pollution through investments in waste management and recycling infrastructure, with $150 million deployed across Southeast Asia and India creating supply chain capacity for recycled materials.

SYSTEMIQ combines strategy consulting with investment through their Circular Economy practice, supporting Fortune 500 companies in circular transition while deploying catalytic capital to circular economy ventures.

The Recycling Partnership provides grant funding and technical assistance to municipal recycling programs, investing over $85 million to improve recovery rates for circular supply chains.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures (founded by Bill Gates) has invested in circular economy ventures including Boston Metal and Form Energy, recognizing that materials circularity is essential to decarbonization goals.

Examples

Herman Miller's Aeron Chair Redesign (Grand Rapids, Michigan): When redesigning their iconic Aeron chair in 2016, Herman Miller implemented rigorous design for disassembly principles. The chair can now be completely disassembled in under 15 minutes using common tools, compared to 45 minutes for the original version. Material complexity was reduced from 200+ components to 60, with 91% recyclable content by weight. The company reports that refurbished Aeron chairs now represent 18% of total unit sales, with margins 35% higher than new product sales due to reduced material costs.

Dell's Closed-Loop Plastics Program (Round Rock, Texas): Dell has pioneered closed-loop recycled plastics in consumer electronics, recovering plastics from end-of-life electronics and incorporating them into new products. Since 2014, they've used over 100 million pounds of recycled plastics, with design standards ensuring recovered materials meet performance requirements. Their modular desktop designs enable 95% of components to be recycled or refurbished, with take-back programs recovering 2.5 billion pounds of electronics globally.

Cascade Engineering's Zero-Waste Manufacturing (Grand Rapids, Michigan): This B Corporation produces injection-molded plastics for automotive and industrial applications with a zero-waste-to-landfill manufacturing process. Their design for disassembly protocols enable customer products to return at end-of-life, with 100% of returned thermoplastics reprocessed into new products. Material passport systems track polymer grades through multiple use cycles, ensuring recycled content meets OEM specifications. They report 28% lower material costs compared to virgin-only production.

Action Checklist

• Conduct a fastener audit of current product lines, documenting types, quantities, and disassembly time requirements for each fastener category
• Develop standardized fastener specifications prioritizing reversibility, tool-free removal, and material compatibility with primary product materials
• Map material flows through existing products, identifying multi-material assemblies that prevent mechanical recycling
• Evaluate adhesive usage and develop specifications for mechanically releasable alternatives where adhesives are currently used
• Create design for disassembly guidelines specifying maximum disassembly time targets for repair access and end-of-life processing
• Establish material passport protocols documenting composition, fastener locations, and disassembly procedures for new product introductions
• Partner with reverse logistics providers to pilot product return and refurbishment programs before scaling
• Engage with state EPR programs to understand fee modulation structures and design products that qualify for reduced fees
• Train product development teams on circular design principles, including trade-off analysis between circularity and other design objectives
• Establish metrics and reporting systems to track circular economy performance including return rates, refurbishment yields, and material recovery rates

FAQ

Q: How do practitioners balance the higher upfront costs of design for disassembly against uncertain end-of-life value recovery? A: Experienced practitioners emphasize that DfD investments must be evaluated against total lifecycle economics rather than upfront manufacturing costs alone. While reversible fasteners and modular architectures may increase unit costs by 3-8%, these investments typically pay back through reduced warranty repair costs (15-25% reduction typical), extended product lifespans enabling PaaS models (2-3x revenue per unit), and materials recovery value (recovering 30-60% of original material cost). The key is maintaining product ownership through lease or service arrangements that capture return value.

Q: What materials present the greatest challenges for circular design, and what alternatives are practitioners adopting? A: Multi-material composites and thermoset polymers represent the most persistent challenges because they cannot be mechanically separated or remelted. Practitioners are shifting toward thermoplastics (which can be repeatedly melted and reformed), mono-material structures (eliminating separation requirements), and bio-based materials that can safely biodegrade if recovery isn't economically viable. Carbon fiber composites remain particularly problematic, with current recycling yielding only short fibers suitable for lower-value applications.

Q: How should companies prioritize circular design investments across diverse product portfolios? A: Practitioners recommend prioritizing based on material value density, volume, and design refresh timing. High-volume products with expensive materials (electronics, industrial equipment) offer the greatest absolute recovery value. Products approaching redesign cycles allow circular principles to be incorporated without retrofitting. Starting with commercial and industrial products often provides higher success rates than consumer products due to more predictable return channels and professional end-users.

Q: What role does digital technology play in enabling design for disassembly at scale? A: Digital product passports and material tracking systems are increasingly essential for economic circularity. These systems document exact material compositions, fastener locations, and disassembly sequences, enabling automated sorting and informed refurbishment decisions. Computer vision and AI are beginning to enable automated identification of product variants and condition assessment, reducing the labor intensity that has historically made manual disassembly uneconomic.

Q: How are Extended Producer Responsibility regulations affecting circular design practices in the US? A: EPR adoption is accelerating circular design investments, but practitioners note that current frameworks often lack sufficient fee differentiation to drive major design changes. The most effective EPR programs include eco-modulation provisions that significantly reduce fees (30-50%) for products meeting recyclability and recycled content thresholds. Companies anticipating stricter future requirements are investing in circular design now to avoid costly retrofits when regulations tighten.

Sources

• Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2024). The Circularity Gap Report 2024. Retrieved from ellenmacarthurfoundation.org
• US Environmental Protection Agency. (2024). Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: 2023 Fact Sheet. Retrieved from epa.gov
• McKinsey & Company. (2024). The Circular Economy in North America: Capturing Value Through Product-as-a-Service. McKinsey Sustainability Practice.
• iFixit. (2024). Smartphone Repairability Index 2024. Retrieved from ifixit.com
• Sustainable Packaging Coalition. (2024). Flexible Packaging Recovery in the United States: Challenges and Opportunities. GreenBlue.
• Product Stewardship Institute. (2025). Extended Producer Responsibility State Policy Tracker. Retrieved from productstewardship.us