2)Indicate Activity number

Toy Discovery @ Kidisquare

Principle Applied: Keep Products and Materials in Use

Elaboration:

• The toy-sharing platform allows parents to rent toys instead of purchasing new ones, ensuring toys remain in circulation for longer periods.

• By extending the life cycle of toys, fewer toys are discarded, reducing landfill waste and environmental harm.

• This approach aligns with the circular economy goal of maximizing the utility of materials and products by promoting reuse and shared consumption.

• It also addresses clutter issues for families and helps reduce the overall demand for new toy production, which in turn conserves natural resources and reduces carbon emissions associated with manufacturing and distribution.

Disadvantage:

• Hygiene and Maintenance Concerns:

  • Shared toys need regular cleaning and maintenance to ensure hygiene, especially for young children. This adds operational costs and complexity.

  • Parents may hesitate to rent toys due to concerns about germs and wear and tear.

• Logistical Challenges:

  • Managing the inventory of rented toys, ensuring timely returns, and redistributing them can be resource-intensive.

  • High demand for certain toys may lead to shortages, causing customer dissatisfaction.

Keep products and materials in use:

• Repurposing of ocean waste (Fishing nets and ocean plastic waste) into furniture, where single Ocean chair uses 960g of ocean plastic waste.

• Each chair can be recycled into new production circles when it comes to the end of its useful life.

• However, the only Fishing Net recycling port in the world is located in Denmark reducing the ease of accessibility to their resources .

Principle: Keep Products and Materials in Use

Reason: By providing a platform for parents to rent toys, Toy Discovery @ Kidisquare ensures that toys remain in circulation and are used by multiple families. This extends the lifecycle of the toys, reducing the need for new production and minimizing waste, aligning with the circular economy goal of keeping materials in use.

activity 1: Mater

Principle 1: Circular Input

Designing for disassembly: The Ocean Collection is designed for disassembly, allowing each component to be recycled into new production circles.

Using recycled materials: The collection uses ocean plastic waste, reducing the demand for raw materials and promoting the reuse of existing resources.

Principle 2: Sharing Economy

Partnering with suppliers: Mater partners with a recycling plant for fishing nets to source ocean plastic waste.

Collaborating with designers and experts: Mater works with designers and experts, to ensure the design stays true to the original while incorporating sustainable materials.

Circular economy

• Design out waste and pollution:
  The toy-sharing platform prevents toys from being discarded prematurely by allowing families to loan toys instead of purchasing them. Hence, reduces wastage, addressing the issue of toys being thrown away once children lose interest. Also, it discourages the cycle of overconsumption by providing families access to premium educational toys without the need for outright ownership. This helps parents make more informed and less wasteful choices.

• Keep products and materials in use:
  By sharing toys among multiple families, the platform extends the lifecycle of each toy, ensuring it is used to its fullest potential. This principle aligns with the circular economy's aim of optimising resource utility.

• Regenerate natural system:
  The sharing model reduces the environmental footprint associated with producing and disposing of toys, thereby contributing to sustainability goals.

  
  

Circular Business Model: For Adidas, the circular business model used is Circular Inputs. Adidas has partnered with Parley for the Oceans to create a collection of shoes and apparel made from recycled ocean plastics.

Benefit: Reduces reliance on virgin plastic, decreasing environmental impact and creating new value from waste materials.

Activity 2

Michelin - Product-as-a-Service

Benefit:

Extended Product Lifespan – By managing the maintenance and replacement of tires, Michelin ensures that the tires are used more efficiently, reducing waste and ensuring a longer lifespan for the product.

Resource efficiency as Michelin retains ownership of the tires, incentivizing them to design durable, high-performance products and implement effective maintenance systems, reducing waste and extending product lifespan.

Adidas.

Circular Business Model applied: Circular Input

Pros: Using this model allows Adidas to use recycled plastic waste, reducing pollution in the oceans. Because of this, there is lower cost to procure materials for production, which is a major positive for Adidas.

Cons: Sometimes customers may not be as inclined to purchase goods that implement recycled materials in production because they are hesitant or unaware about the recycling process, leading them to believe that these goods are unhygienic or of poor quality.

Resource Recovery:

Michelin focuses on recovering raw materials from tyres at the end of their life cycle.

Advantages: Environmental sustainability

Disadvantages: Complexity of recycling tyres and high initial cost

Product as a Service:

Michelin offers customers to rent their tyres by the mile.

Advantages: Maximises the useful life of the tyres and promotes efficient usage of tyres

Disadvantages: Potential misuse of the tyres by customers and higher maintenance cost.

Advantages:

• Since kids do not have longspan of attention to toys, parents can choose to rent toys instead as kids can have a variety of choices and changes, so they do not get bored of it. If toys are bought, as kids stop liking it, the toys then become a waste of space and left untouched.

Disadvantages:

• Hygiene: With rent toys being shared among many kids, there might be potential concerns of cleanliness as kids might be exposed to germs, and safety as kids might not play it the right way. Toys might not be properly played by kids (e.g. chewing & throwing of toys) which might lead to unsanitary and damaged toys. Parents might be concerned and be discouraged from renting toys.