Chapter 1 — full chapter
Chapter 1 — full chapter
1.4.1 Life-Cycle Thinking and Design-Decision Tools
Eco-design strategy wheel (LiDS wheel): a practical map of eight strategies across materials, production, use and end-of-life that helps design teams choose where to intervene in the product lifecycle at the design-brief stage.
Design-for-X checklists: structured SME checklists for durability, repairability, disassembly, recyclability and mono-materiality, applied to a sketch, sample or existing product in under an hour — flagging which circular strategies the current design supports and which it blocks.
Circularity metrics at design stage: the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) scores how restorative a product’s material flows are (0–1), alongside circularity rate and simpler design-stage proxies such as recycled-content share and mono-material component share.
Tools that support design decisions: material-selection tools (e.g. Higg MSI), digital product configurators, PLM sustainability modules and LCA-lite screening tools allow designers to compare options before the design brief is locked.
SME exercise (EQF 4/5/6): score a product concept on the eco-design wheel — one sentence per pathway (materials, production, use, end-of-life) — and estimate its MCI with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s free Excel tool, then reflect in one or two sentences on the single design change that would move the score most.
Added some links to facilitate the completion of the exercise:
LiDS wheel: https://www.sustainabledesignhandbook.com/tools
Ellen MacArthur MCI tool: https://www.thinkstep-anz.com/services/circular-economy/material-circularity-indicator-mci-calculator
Ecodesign and circular design are closely related, but they emphasise different questions. Ecodesign focuses on reducing environmental impacts across the product life cycle, while circular design also considers how products, components and materials can remain in use and retain value over time. LCA can help assess the trade-offs created by either approach.
Life cycle assessment is particularly valuable for revealing hotspots, trade-offs and burden shifting. A material may reduce climate impacts while increasing water use; a more durable construction may require more resources initially but perform better if the garment is worn for longer; and a recyclable material may deliver little practical benefit if appropriate collection and recycling infrastructure is unavailable.
LCA should therefore be treated as a decision-support tool rather than a final sustainability verdict. Results depend on data quality, system boundaries, functional units, allocation methods and assumptions about use and end-of-life. Environmental LCA also does not automatically assess labour conditions, cultural value, desirability, emotional durability or the fairness of value distribution. Some impacts remain methodologically difficult to represent: the current Apparel and Footwear PEFCR, for example, is expected to be further developed to address areas including biodiversity and microfibre shedding.
Key distinction: Life cycle thinking helps designers consider the whole system. LCA quantifies selected environmental impacts within a clearly defined scope. Circular design uses this evidence alongside questions of durability, repairability, adaptability and value retention.
Sources:
UNEP Life Cycle Initiative
PEFCR for Apparel and Footwear