I'm calling it: 2022 is the year of circular design - TNW

I’m calling it. 2021 was the year of the electric vehicle. I predict, 2022 is the year of circular design.

We recently saw batteries makers Northvolt produce its first lithium-ion battery cell featuring a nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) cathode produced with metals recovered through battery waste recycling. This is a big deal.

While this is a huge leap in battery innovation, we’re not entirely there yet. The company aims to produce cells with 50% recycled material by 2030 — that’s a long way off.

What interests me just as much is that other materials from battery recycling — recovered copper, aluminum, and plastics from the batteries and materials — will be recirculated back into manufacturing flows through local third-parties. All in all, this is circular design in action.

So what’s circular design?

Google “circular design”, and you’ll find lots of fluff about sustainability, using terms like “green-design”, “eco-design”, and “sustainable design”. Are you yawning already?

But it’s critical to a circular economy. Think about IoT. We’ve all seen the problems of e-waste — I’m not the only tech journalist with a graveyard of device obsolescence.

A company goes bust or is acquired. It stops supporting older devices or updating the device’s software. A security problem forces the device out of operation. A lack of right to repair chokes us. Or technology standards evolve faster than the IoT device.

What if this didn’t have to happen? What if materials are designed beyond their...

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