Weave Circularity Through Sustainable Materials
Infuse circular principles into product development through sustainable materials that are recyclable and biodegradable by design.
Materials are the building blocks of the products we make and consume daily. However, the choice of materials has a significant impact on the environmental footprint of a product.
Today, to fulfill the economic demands of a rising population, industries are relying on new virgin materials almost exclusively, which leads to rising material extraction and usage. As outlined in the 2023 Circularity Gap Report by Circle Economy, around 90% of materials are wasted, lost or unavailable for reuse and recycling.
In Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s butterfly diagram, the circular economy system “illustrates the continuous flow of materials in a circular economy through two main cycles — the technical cycle and biological cycle.” In the technical cycle, materials are kept in circulation through reuse, repair, remanufacture and recycling processes. In the biological cycle, biodegradable materials are returned to the soil through composting and anaerobic digestion.
The Three Pillars of Sustainable Materials
Optimize Materials by Design, Not Selection
Have you always selected materials based on cost, availability and performance?
In a linear economy, traditional material selection often falls short in addressing the entire lifecycle of a product. Instead, you should adopt a more comprehensive outlook. At least 80% of a product’s environmental impact is determined during the design stage, according to research by UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Decisions made at the design stage influence how long the product lasts, what it’s made of, if it can be repaired, and what happens to it at the end of life.
By integrating circular economy principles, you can improve the product development process to emphasize durability, reparability and ease of disassembly with an extended lifespan while simplifying recycling and remanufacturing stages. This shift requires a collaborative platform where your design, engineering and manufacturing teams work in tandem to use renewable materials that are not only innovative but also environmentally responsible.
Pioneer Recyclable and Biodegradable Materials
The journey towards a circular economy beckons companies to push the boundaries and pioneer new materials that leave a minimal ecological footprint. Why? The reason is traditional materials, while functional, can pose challenges during material separation and recovery. The way forward is to optimize materials for biodegradable and technical cycles.
Revamp Chemical Processes for Material Recovery
A circular economy transition necessitates a comprehensive overhaul of existing practices, extending beyond the materials’ design. You can catalyze change by revamping chemical processes to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of materials that are hard to recycle. This involves developing new technologies and improving existing chemical processes to separate and recover materials from complex products, such as electronics or batteries.
Cutting-edge advancements in modeling and molecular simulation enable the transformation of complex materials into reusable components. When discarded materials are upgraded into valuable resources, companies can extract greater value from their existing inventory. Furthermore, innovative chemical processes can streamline recycling management and the remanufacturing of these materials, which reduces energy consumption and waste generation.
How can companies extract, process and transport metals and minerals to lower their environmental impact?
Mining companies need to develop several strategies. First, they need to develop traceability of resources from the pit to the customer through their transparency. By informing customers where the products come from, companies can build trust and credibility. Additionally, mining companies need to enhance visibility over sustainability KPIs. The third strategy is openness to external audiences. Local populations, NGOs, and governments need their say in operations. This will give companies the license to operate.
How can companies be more circular through their packaging strategy?
If we think about what can be improved, we think about parcels built with recycled products or bio-based materials like wool and algae. We may also use parcels with a manual height adjustment to get the parcel at the level of each content and avoid using additional filling materials. Technology can optimize this strategy and support the operator in this selection. Additionally, technology can help the operator split an order into several parcels to optimize the saturation rate of the parcel. And if we go to the extreme, we can also have industry-setting automated or semi-automated packaging equipment: the carton will be built around the contents of the order.
How can we use eco-friendly building materials without breaking the bank?
The first approach is to leverage biomass. We often hear about projects to capture carbon and we know of very interesting materials today that capture carbon: These are trees, and trees capture carbon when they are growing. We can make good use of this in construction. Today, we see more and more initiatives to replace concrete with these materials. However, we cannot focus only on the building itself — we have to focus also on the sub-components of the building. We have many SOLIDWORKS customers today who are working on locking systems and improving their subsystems. They try to reduce the quantity of materials used to decarbonate and find the best alternatives.
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How One Industry Leader Met The Challenges Of Sustainable Packaging
By implementing circular economy practices empowered by Dassault Systèmes’ innovative solutions, a major consumer goods organization reduced the environmental impact of millions of products while maintaining high-performance standards and meeting consumer demands.
Bridge the Gap: From Circular Intentions to Tangible Impact
Turning circularity plans into action is potent for risk mitigation and future-proofing. As the regulatory landscapes evolve and environmental concerns intensify, companies proactively embracing circular practices are better positioned to navigate shifting compliance requirements, boost supply chain resilience and reduce dependence on volatile raw material markets.
The shift towards a circular economy hinges upon material selection, design and innovation. With the right circularity strategy incorporating sustainable materials, you can secure tangible results and make a circular economy achievable and profitable.
How can companies incorporate more recycled materials in manufacturing?
It starts with life cycle assessment to know which materials have the biggest impact on the final product. If the biggest impact is in supply chains, optimizing the sourcing strategy can be helpful but challenging because of the number of suppliers, the availability and the quality of recycled materials. If the impact is in manufacturing, it’s easiest to use virgin materials. With optimization, however, we can use more recycled materials instead. On the other hand, if the impact is greatest in the material itself, we can look into the recipe, find which ingredients generate the most and look into alternative ingredients to remove or reduce the amount of waste.
How can companies make more sustainable sourcing decisions earlier in the product life cycle?
Sustainable sourcing is the first step toward circularity. To achieve this, companies need to align their sourcing strategy with their ESG and sustainability goals globally. There are opportunities to easily achieve this by buying low-carbon energy, procuring energy efficiency technologies and deploying them into different production sites, purchasing waste and byproducts from other companies and organizations, and then using them as raw materials. We can also acquire or buy carbon credits and other sustainability assets.
What is the value of simulation in developing new and eco-friendly materials?
Developing new sustainable materials is not easy. Companies need to quickly understand how a new material might behave throughout its entire life cycle. Any new material needs to be capable of satisfying a complex range of business and consumer requirements. These design requirements can be understood and satisfied with the use of simulation. Simulation helps companies select the right materials and helps with concept creation, design development and scale-up. However, this is only possible if the material’s behavior itself is really well understood. But when new sustainable materials can be accurately modeled, this creates value opportunities in many ways.
More Questions on Sustainable Materials?
When it comes to advancing sustainable materials, scientists play a critical role in accelerating progress. They can employ a range of cutting-edge technologies to streamline the development and formulation processes.
The first step is to model and simulate materials. By creating virtual representations of materials and their properties, scientists can significantly reduce the time and resources needed for physical experiments, and ultimately, conduct better experiments with fewer resources.
The second step is to streamline R&D processes through a digital lab where most innovation starts. By transitioning towards digital labs, companies can:
- Simplify data management by centralizing scientific information
- Foster collaboration through real-time data sharing
- Optimize experiment design and planning
- Automate workflows to reduce manual tasks
- Enhance data accuracy and lab efficiency through integration with lab instruments
Moreover, a digital lab ensures compliance with regulatory standards over sample and inventory management — and scales with the evolving needs of R&D organizations. By optimizing these aspects, digital labs allow scientists to focus on innovation and accelerate their research and development.
The third step is next-generation formulation design. To accelerate the formulation development of renewable materials, scientists should embrace next-generation formulation design techniques. New solutions allow for convenient data and materials management and domain-specific calculations to optimize formulations for cost, efficiency, reporting and compliance. Scientists can also use advanced algorithms and data analytics to optimize material compositions and properties to innovate more sustainable formulated products.
The next step is one of the hottest topics in the world today: AI and machine learning — two valuable tools in material science. Scientists can harness these technologies to analyze vast datasets, identify patterns and even predict the behavior of new materials. This accelerates the development and discovery process.
The last step is to utilize an integrated platform for data sharing and collaboration. Collaboration is always key in advancing new renewable energies and materials. Scientists should use an integrated, global platform that is flexible, open, scalable and agile. This will facilitate seamless data sharing and collaboration among researchers, both within the organization and across institutions.
In summary, these strategies empower scientists to innovate more efficiently and significantly contribute to a sustainable future, from modeling and simulation to the power of AI and collaborative platforms.
Step one is to optimize the design. Engineers are asked to reduce the weight of the component in order to bring better vehicle performances. So going to the lightening of the vehicle. But in order to do that, they will develop a new virtual simulation that will add them to design parts with less materials using different technologies but without compromising the expected performance of the vehicle.
Step two — choose a sustainable material. That means how to help or guide the engineer to better use recycled materials. In addition, the recyclability of the used material need to be taken into consideration at the end of life of the vehicle in order to follow the circular economy rules.
Step three, innovate with new materials. To take some examples, replacing leather with a synthetic one based on recycled bottles of plastic. Bio-sourced material is another axis of development by using waste from agriculture. As a consequence, the final objective is to limit the extraction of new virgin materials, which is the principle of the circular economy
Most of the time, companies try to improve sustainability metrics that would benefit economic performance. And indeed, benefits can be both ecological and economical, for example, by enhancing the weight of materials in the product. Less weight is generally more sustainable, which generates fewer costs for the company and incurs less materials to source. Another example is by reducing the energy consumed. If it requires less energy to manufacture many products, it's both sustainable and cost-effective. So, these are KPIs that are often achieved in the real world.
Raw material procurement and manufacturing generate a sizeable environmental footprint. Companies can tackle this by focusing on design, materials, and ecosystem changes.
- Design: Many single-use plastics in packaging are unnecessary. For example, tea bags often have plastic coverings that end up in landfills. Several companies eliminated plastic cutouts on packaging, making them fully recyclable. Simple changes, like reusable cleaning product packaging or eliminating excess plastic wraps, can significantly reduce waste.
- Materials: Switching to cardboard, paper, or aluminum can replace plastic. Some European countries now sell water in aluminum cans due to higher recyclability. Plastic six-pack holders can be replaced with biodegradable or cardboard options. Companies can also explore edible or dissolvable packaging for food.
- Ecosystem: Businesses should work with suppliers to reduce plastic use in logistics. Many raw materials are wrapped in single-use plastic, which ends up in landfills. Reusable containers and pallets can help eliminate this waste.
- Plastic Alternatives: Options include biodegradable, compostable, plant-based, paper, and reusable packaging, but companies must ensure proper disposal infrastructure exists.
Cleaner, cost-effective alternatives are available. By rethinking design, switching materials, and optimizing supply chains, companies can reduce plastic waste and tap into new business opportunities.
Learn more about recycling plastic.
Other Circular Economy Pillars
Explore key pillars that are disrupting the conventional linear economy, eliminating value leakage and paving the way for a scalable, profitable and achievable circular economy transformation.
Rethink Product Design
The entire product lifecycle matters. Optimize product design for each lifecycle phase to reduce the environmental impact of your products and increase their circularity.
Reshape Value Networks
Ready to merge environmental protection with business operations? Move from linear to circular value networks to demonstrate that value creation and profitability are achievable within strong planetary boundaries.
Take Definitive Steps Toward Circularity Success
Inspired by actionable strategies from Dassault Systèmes’ industry experts? Dive into our Circularity Insights Digest, your definitive guide to transform circularity goals into scalable, achievable and profitable outcomes.
Circular Solutions for Your Business Challenges
Circularity in Action
At the core of the concept of circular economy lies the idea of circularity, where resources are kept in use for as long as possible. Real-world adoption of circular economy strategies demonstrates the tangible benefits of this approach. Embracing Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE® platform allows organizations to reimagine their operations, aligning them with the principles of the circular economy. From design phase to lifecycle analysis, businesses can create products that contribute positively to the green economy while meeting consumer demand for sustainable solutions.