Publications
Prospektiven
Neues zur zirkulären Wertschöpfung / Circular Economy News
The publication series “Prospektiven” reports on project results and findings from the Prosperkolleg research project.
Eva Speck
Against the background of the development of a circular economy strategy in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the article provides an overview of the various circular activities of the federal states. The focus is on the circular economy in the sense of a comprehensive economic and overall societal concept that takes the entire value chain into account in order to keep resources in cycles with the least possible loss of value. The comparison shows: The understanding of the circular economy, the access to it, the scope of its activities and the group of actors vary significantly between the federal states. [Language: German]
Sabine Büttner, Carina Hermandi
The transformation to a resource-conserving, circular economy is a multi-layered challenge. However, new business models and circular approaches are usually discussed from the perspective of companies and suppliers, while the acceptance and corresponding behaviour of consumers is implicitly assumed or rarely questioned according to its preconditions.
In the first part, the article tries to raise awareness for the importance of consumers for a successful circular economy and to identify obstacles to circular consumption. The second part looks at the possibilities of the design process to include the perspective of consumers more strongly in the design of circular products, services and business models in order to increase their acceptance and make behavioural changes easier and more attractive. [Language: German]
Julian Mast, Friederike von Unruh, Wolfgang Irrek
The Circular Economy is an approach to replace the linear economic system and its “take-make-waste” logic in order to significantly reduce associated resource consumption and environmental damage. A heuristic aid for developing measures to close, slow down and narrow down material cycles are the so-called R-strategies. Their exact design is controversially discussed in the literature and is not uniform. Nevertheless, they serve companies as guiding principles for internal change processes and as a basis for examining the extent to which a product, process or business model can be made more circular.
This article addresses the scientific controversies surrounding the definition, presents a concept of R-strategies in more detail and illustrates it using the example of the product “bicycle”. Furthermore, the implementation of R-strategies at company level through innovations or within the framework of circular economy management is discussed as a prerequisite for continuous change processes. [Language: German]
Manuel Grundmann, Stefan Alscher
Companies from the food packaging and food manufacturing sectors are showing interest in the sustainability assessment of their packaging. Before more sustainable packaging alternatives are developed in elaborate processes, a transparent and comprehensible approach to possible product variants based on sound criteria is in the interest of the companies.
This article presents the results from the development of the evaluation matrix and the evaluation questions from the cooperation with the companies. It gives an insight into the structure of the matrix, its application and possible potentials for its further development. [Language: German]
Carina Hermandi, Linda Dierke, Stefan Alscher, Manuel Grundmann and Wolfgang Irrek
This concept paper addresses the research question: What are the challenges and opportunities in initiating and introducing Circular Economy approaches in SMEs and what support do SMEs need to effectively implement Circular Economy strategies and measures? For this purpose, possible fields of action as well as challenges and opportunities for the introduction of Circular Economy approaches in cooperation with SMEs were investigated and a structured procedure was developed with which companies can identify initial approaches and solution steps so that the change from a linear to a circular value creation succeeds. The result was the Prosperkolleg’s Potential Check Circular Economy with a four-step procedure for individual consideration of the circular economy in the respective companies, including a circularity matrix – a tool for identifying suitable fields of action in the companies. [Language: German]
Julian Mast, Friederike von Unruh, Wolfgang Irrek
In order to achieve a sustainable economy, several concepts exist side by side that are supposed to enable a holistic transformation of the economic system: the circular economy according to the currently valid Recycling Management Act (KrWG) in Germany, industrial ecology, the cradle-to-cradle approach and the circular economy. A comparison of the concepts shows that they differ above all in the strategy for achieving the goals and the framework of consideration of the concepts. Derived from this, there are also differences in the implementation at business model and transformation level. [Language: German]
RETHINK
Impulse zur zirkulären Wertschöpfung / Enabling the Circular Economy
The Rethink series takes up topics of circular value creation, brings them to the point in an understandable way and wants to set impulses.
Sabine Büttner, Wolfgang Irrek, Uwe Handmann
Circular value creation (Circular Economy) is a central building block in the transformation to a sustainable economy. The practice-oriented research project “Prosperkolleg” shows that medium-sized companies are open to developing their business models in this direction, but need impetus and tools to put this concept into practice. Other players are also looking for support on the path to circular value creation. A Competence Center CE.Hub.NRW can reliably strengthen the innovative power in this field and at the same time open up potential for the labor market. [Language: German]
Tom Jost, Mike Duddek
Every year, around 50 million tonnes of e-waste are produced worldwide. However, only a small part of the raw materials it contains are recovered. One reason for this is that it is not economical to manually dismantle the devices so that the components can be cleanly separated and sent for recycling. With the Circular Digital Economy Lab (CDEL), the Prosperkolleg project at the Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences has developed an exemplary process for better recycling this e-waste through precise and automated disassembly. [Language: German]
Tom Jost, Nermeen Abou Baker
In order to be able to process WEEE such as smartphones automatically and efficiently for recycling, the first step is to identify the product models. This is because only knowledge of product characteristics and construction plans makes it possible to open and disassemble the devices in such a way that valuable raw materials, but also pollutants, can be collected separately. Scientists at the Prosperkolleg use artificial intelligence to classify the models and can achieve exciting successes with the transfer learning approach. [Language: German]
Carina Hermandi, Linda Dierke, Stefan Alscher, Manuel Grundmann
The Prosperkolleg has designed a four-step procedure for small and medium-sized manufacturing companies to support them in approaching the broad topic of circular economy. The aim is an initial introduction and a subsequent consideration of the options for action in the company. After identifying the options for action, a plan of action is developed together with the company. [Language: German]
Julian Mast, Friederike von Unruh, Wolfgang Irrek
The Circular Economy is an approach to replace the linear economic system and its “take-make-waste” logic in order to reduce associated resource consumption and environmental damage. A heuristic aid for the development of measures to close, slow down and narrow down material cycles are the so-called R-strategies, which are presented in this article. [Language: English]
Manuel Grundmann, Stefan Alscher
Companies from the food packaging and food manufacturing sectors are showing interest in the sustainability assessment of their packaging. However, before more sustainable packaging alternatives are developed in elaborate processes, a transparent and comprehensible consideration of possible product variants based on well-founded criteria is advisable. This article presents results from the development of a systematic sustainability assessment of food packaging in the form of an assessment matrix. It provides an insight into the structure of the matrix and gives reasons for its application in companies in the food industry. [Language: English]
Sabine Büttner, Wolfgang Irrek, Uwe Handmann
Circular value creation (Circular Economy) is a central building block in the transformation to a sustainable economy. The practice-oriented research project “Prosperkolleg” shows that medium-sized companies are open to developing their business models in this direction, but need impetus and tools to put this concept into practice. Other players are also looking for support on the path to circular value creation. A Competence Center Circular Value Creation NRW can reliably strengthen the innovative power in this field and at the same time open up potential for the labor market. [Language: German]
From the practice
Examples of circular value creation from business practice
Motivations, challenges, approaches – the Prosperkolleg project reports on companies on their journey towards the Circular Economy.
Other Editorships
Open Access Journal by MDPI
Special Issue
Guest Editors: Prof. Dr. César A. Collazos, Prof. Dr. Stefan Geisler, Prof. Dr. Sabrina C. Eimler, Prof. Dr. Uwe Handmann
HCI-related development is entering a new era, which demands new technologies to support the rapid development of Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR) applications. Current cutting edge technologies, which include brain-computer interface (BCI), image and vision computing, artificial intelligence, etc., have made an impact on HCI applications. Challenges exist in conception and technology, but also new methods and tools have to be thought up, for example, in participatory design. This Special Issue aims to gather experts and scholars from related fields to present and share their recent research on HCI and brain informatics related applications.