Tuesday, July 26, 2022

From The World Economic Forum.....

There is a lot going on here and for now I will leave it to interested reader to do the higher level analysis.

3 circular economy approaches to reduce demand for critical metals
July 18, 2022 
....1. Go from owning to using

Be honest, you likely have at least one old mobile phone tucked in the bottom of a drawer. Possibly an unused hard drive taking up space too. You aren’t alone. The average car or van in England is driven just 4% of the time. While most already have a personal phone, 39% of workers globally have employer-provided laptops and mobile phones.

This is not at all resource efficient. More sharing can reduce ownership of idle equipment and thus material usage. Car sharing platforms such as Getaround and BlueSG have already seized that opportunity to offer vehicles where you pay per hour used.

To enable a broader transition from ownership to usership, the way we design things and systems need to change too. For example, car sharing is made possible by new keyless unlocking features. Similarly, user profiles that create a distinction for work and personal use on the same device is needed to reduce the number of devices per person. A design process that focuses on fulfilling the underlying need instead of designing for product purchasing is fundamental to this transition. This is the mindset needed to redesign cities to reduce private vehicles and other usages.....