David Tapias, Director of Innovation at Fluidra, shared with attendees the challenges and lessons learned from his circular economy and design project developed in collaboration with EIG and Lúcid.

Attendees put collaboration into practice in a hands-on Circular Ventures workshop

On July 14th, about twenty companies gathered to delve into the design of products and business models for a circular economy, as part of the Barcelona Design Week, within the Shift or Shit cycle.

The session, organized by Lúcid, EIG, and D!OS, aimed to share knowledge with manufacturing companies and guide them in the mindset needed to embrace a conceptual shift in the way they design and market their products.

A key element was the testimony of David Tapias, R&I Manager at Fluidra, who explained the in-depth work they are undertaking, collaborating with EIG on strategy and with Lúcid on product design.

The event, presented by Juan Mellen, President of D!OS, started with an explanation of the conceptual framework and design approach, led by Cristina Sendra, Technical Director at EIG, and Marc Fabra, Co-Founder and Design Director at Lúcid.

Achievable goals to improve people's lives

Cristina highlighted the importance of setting expectations to achievable goals while maintaining the vision, in a process that must integrate different aspects affecting all areas of the company. She also emphasized the significance of ensuring that the materials used are safe and healthy at all stages of their lifecycle, as a key aspect of any circular design.

From there, step by step, progress toward the global vision of the system in which it will be integrated, to ensure it provides services properly, both in its intended function and at the end of its useful life.

"At EIG, we do not work to create products that have less impact, but rather to regenerate ecosystems, the economy, and improve people's lives," Cristina explained.

Designing from the business model

Marc pointed out that designing for a circular economy in the product field requires a fundamental shift: from thinking about the product, its function, and aesthetics to designing from the business model. That is, designing products that can respond and function within the new economic context.

By emphasizing a systemic perspective, design can prevent the issues we currently face with products designed for a linear economy. Marc explained that 80% of a product's impact is determined in the design phase.

Commitment from leadership

David shared the context in which Fluidra decided to deepen this innovation process within its ESG strategy. He emphasized as a fundamental aspect the direct and ongoing involvement of the company's top management, actively leading the change, along with the participation of multiple internal teams supported by external experts.

"To innovate in the product, you have to believe in it and create the culture, support it from leadership, with structure and resources."

As key takeaways, he noted that when applying the Cradle to Cradle approach to product analysis, they discovered that they actually knew very little about both the material composition and the supply chain behind it. This also makes it difficult to reduce upstream impacts and manage traceability and information transparency.

David also explained that, within their company, they had to standardize and establish their own circularity criteria, breaking them down into real concepts associated with concrete values. In their case, they numerically defined how much longer their products had to last, the percentage of recycled material they should contain, their recyclability percentage, and how much more repairable they needed to be, among many other indicators.

"Each company has to define with real values what it means to be circular. For us, it worked very well to assign how much more repairable, recyclable, or durable our products needed to be," David stated.

Attendees had the opportunity to engage in dialogue with David, who generously shared his experience in detail. The large number of questions and the interest generated extended the initial discussion by half an hour beyond the scheduled time.

Circular Ventures Workshop

We then moved on to the hands-on session, where all the companies had the opportunity to take on the challenge of thinking disruptively to create circular joint ventures.

We hope you can join us for future sessions! 🙌