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Project

Sustainable perception and material experience as drivers for increased material attachment and product longevity: towards extended plastics identity for a circular economy.

The current transition towards on circular economy comes along with an increased attention to material choice and selection, both in the production of raw materials and in the impact on future generated waste. Literature indicates that consumers develop stronger attachments to products (and its materials) with an identity that is congruent to their own. People exhibit more protective behaviours to products to which they are attached and will try to postpone their replacement as long as possible, this product lifetime extension is key to achieve circularity and value retention. Any physical interaction with products is done through its materials. Materials are essential building blocks of products and have a strong influence on product appearance, but also on the product's functionality, symbolic meaning, and overall sensory product experience. Materials should thus be considered from both a functional or technical and a user-centred or experiential perspective. Consequently, an all-encompassing understanding of materials is needed that does not only include material characterization knowledge on technical properties and functionality that can be found in datasheets based on standardized tests (technical characterization). In addition to economic and ecological characteristics, the experience and perception of materials should be considered as well (experiential characterization) to increase commercial success of both products and materials. Nowadays, raised by the growing insights in the harm that our current plastics consumption causes, virgin plastic products materials perceived by some societal groups as practically reprehensible and some (e.g. plastic bags, straws) are/ get banned accordingly. This increases the search for new and alternative sustainable materials, such as natural materials and bioplastics, but also recycled plastics. Nowadays, virgin plastics or even recycled plastics are not always perceived in a positive way by either its industrial users (e.g. material engineers and designers) or by consumers when embodied in daily products. In order to re-appreciate these valuable unique materials, research urgently needs to support the purposeful use of plastics design for long-lived solutions, in contrast to the multitude of current single-use products. In this context, a large gap is detected in data from experiential material characterization that is equally important as technical material data. Building upon our previous work, we aim to set-up a straightforward framework for experiential material characterization that incorporates physical, standard material demonstrator forms (to control experimental conditions over various plastic materials) and a set of experiential material qualities for characterization by consumers (and designers). Next, data collection experiments will be set up with specific materials and users in order to investigate the mediating effect of a material's experience and sustainable perception on material attachment and product lifetime extension. This framework enables us to set the basis for further research projects in collaboration with specific industries of whom many are situated in Flanders, i.e. on the one hand with producers of virgin plastics (e.g. BASF, Total, Borealis, Ineos Styrolution, Exxonmobil, Lanxess, Kaneka), bioplastics (e.g. ALPAGRO packaging, B4Plastics, but also many of the virgin plastics producers), and recycled plastics (e.g. SUEZ-QCP, Eco-oh!, Vanheede), and on the other hand with design agencies (such as edmire, Pilipili, Voxdale, Verhaert, Pars Pro Toto), producers of (durable) plastic products (such as Tupperware, P&G, Samsonite), and the SIM-Flanders research centre. During the project, the various options for further valorisation will be explored, such as Horizon Europe, VLAIO O&O and VLAIO innovation mandate.
Date:1 May 2021 →  30 Apr 2023
Keywords:PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT, ECODESIGN, CIRCULAR MATERIALS, MATERIALS CHARACTERISATION
Disciplines:Human-centred design, Systems design