Make it circular, or just don't make it

Only design stuff you can screw open, argues designer Richard van der Laken, co-founder & creative director of What Design Can Do.

At magic school Hogwarts, they have a good understanding of circularity. The magic spell "Reparo" makes everything broken in the world of Harry Potter whole. Come to think of it, when your three-month-old toaster unexpectedly stops working and you try in vain to open it to see what's wrong. Nowhere to be seen a single screw, because the appliance is molded plastic and hermetically sealed, just like your phone, cheap electric toothbrush and printer. All virtually impossible to repair, all non-circular.

What we often take for granted as a daily inconvenience is in fact a life-altering obstacle to reducing our footprint on earth. Items that cannot be reused or repaired are an unacceptable waste of energy and resources. Taken together, they represent a huge burden on our ecosystem. As much as 80 percent of a product's environmental impact is determined by decisions that take place at the design stage. For a designer, that's a big responsibility. And that's where things very often go completely wrong.

Fully demountable smartphone

Our addictive throw-away culture must be fought much harder. And the designer, with consumers and regulators on their side, holds a key to pushing manufacturers toward a circular society. For Dutch designer Bas van Abel, annoyance at not being able to open his own expensive phone prompted him to develop a new smartphone: the Fairphone, completely disassembled.

For successful fashion designer Borre Akkersdijk, frustration with the heavily polluting clothing industry - responsible for 10 percent of global CO2 emissions - was even reason to stop his successful annual ByBorre collection altogether. He now focuses almost entirely on making ...

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Photo credit: Buzigahill, a Ugandan clothing brand that uses circular design techniques.