Circularity Check
Join & co-develop the leading circularity standard – join as a partner before 30.05.2024
Towards a new industry standard:
The Circularity Check
The Circularity Check aims to close a practical gap between the Right-to-Repair, Energy Labels, Repairability Scores, Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Data Act and Digital Product Passport – potentially others. We believe it to be the most effective way to avoid fraud when it comes to repair, to establish trust within the repair market, to align incentives and to ensure that any regulations or repair voucher programs that foster a more sustainable consumption are effective. It will further help create a foundation for developing circular business models and new regulations that aim to accelerate circularity as well as establish a playing field for fair competition. The data generated can help look beyond symptoms in the market that are currently being treated differently and create a true picture of the state of circularity and obsolescence – by hardware, software or social dimensions.
The goal of the Circularity Check is, that in any case – e.g. if a customer faces a problem with an appliance – the error diagnosis needs to be performed and the root cause needs to be identified. This needs to be done in a systematic, data-driven, well documented yet cost effective way. Ideally, technicians and even product users can use an app or online service that connects to an electronics device to collect necessary data and perform an analysis – like an universal diagnostic function. Done encrypted, this can ensure privacy and security while enabling product users to do self-repair as well as repairers and other stakeholders like refurbishers or recyclers. Additionally, other factors that help determine the next best circular action and that can influence consumer and industry behavior such as actual usage, energy consumption, material hand- and footprint, local context such as the availability of repair infrastructure and others could be factored into the overall recommendation too.
One example is that if someone like a recycler aims to assess the reuse potential of a product or component – but can’t do this right now since they don’t have product and usage data, even with access granted – they could save a labor intensive process step if data is shared in a trusted and standardized manner so it makes circular business models and operations more attractive. Another example is, that it will reduce consumers’ bad repair experiences by avoiding situations where a technician does a diagnosis without looking at an appliance, says it’s not worth it but provides a discount for a new one or similar – in some cases you’ll already find documentaries about “How not to get screwed over” which are damaging the repair market. A final example is, that this way it becomes clear which brands are following repair and circularity regulation so malpractices can be identified and legal actions enforced.
While there might be some prejudices when it comes to such a standard, we believe that repair and circularity are inevitable, the better business model and in all our interest. Done correctly, the Circularity Check will create a foundation for more sustainable business practices.
In the best case scenario, it will work like a product scan that recommends the most circular action given a product’s lifecycle and the local context in less than a minute.
This standard should consider expertise and viewpoints from: repairers who will perform the check, manufacturers that need to provide product data, retailers and insurances that need help in assessing the next best circular option, cities that aim to reduce waste, regulators who need to measure effectiveness of policies and support programs, and ultimately researchers who aim to understand the dynamics and can bring in the consumer perspective.
All that is needed now is your commitment to join. Financial support for developing the standard can be provided through grants by up to €10k. The details and actual standard will be developed following this process:
Register interest and join via form by September 20th – done
Final grant application by September 30th – done
Wait for approval of grant – done: "success"
Start of development of DIN Spec in April 2024 - partners can still join before 30.05.2024 - ongoing
Voluntary commitment phase until go live
Official DIN standard go live – tbd
Expansion to ISO standard – tbd
Please join by filling out our form by May 30th 2024!
Thanks and please reach out,
Sebastian
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Co-Founder & CEO
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PS: The need for something like a Circularity Check has been already identified by the DIN as part of their standardization roadmap for circular economy – see here under need category 1 “Digitalization/Business Models/Management” (especially 1.2, 1.5, 1.10, 1.27, 1.28 and others) next to need category 2 “Electrotechnology & ICT” (2.3, 2.12, 2.22, 2.27, 2.30 and others) – interdependencies will be checked as part of the process. Thus, the risk of rejection is reduced and potential support is high.