Thanks to the strong push coming from the European Union to fight waste production, the Circular Economy (CE) has gained an important role in Europe. Following this trend, many institutions nowadays state to work on the CE implementation or supporting the transition to a CE. However, are they including design approaches and practices? The design phase is starting to be considered the crucial point to obtain a CE as it required a profound radical change from the beginning of the process and at system levels. After framing the CE concept, we performed desk research to identify which are the players in the CE projects implementation. Afterwards, a multiple case study analysis were performed to the most proper one to understand the presence and the role of design in the implementation process. The results placed the actors in a very fragmented framework and seem to lack almost completely the design presence.

Authors: Chiara Battistoni, Silvia Barbero

Since 2014, the Circular Economy (CE) concept is gaining an important role in the European context thanks to the specific direction given by the EU policy. This research wants to frame Italian companies who are working on CE context to understand mainly which is their approach and awareness to CE and if the design is playing a role in this transition. At the beginning of 2019, an online questionnaire was sent to the actors present in the app database ‘Mercato Circolare’ who, since March 2017, is mapping the Italian situation collecting the actors related to the CE selecting companies, events and experiences of circular citizenship. Despite the response rate was 14%, the results are interesting: 100% are SMEs; 21% are not aware to work on CE; >52% identified difficulties with value appreciation; design competencies are present in the 66% of realities and in 29% the designers by formation are founders.

Authors: Chiara Battistoni, Nadia Lambiase, Silvia Barbero, Filippo Barbera