Our CIRC4Life Showroom at Laurea Univers

Our CIRC4Life Showroom at Laurea University

2 October 2020

From the 22nd to 25th September, our partner Laurea University of Applied Sciences invited staff, students and guests to visit the CIRC4Life showroom as part of the real life testing of the living lab activities. The objective was to collect feedback from end-users on our new products and the developed app at their Tikkurila campus in Vantaa (Finland).

With 90 visitors to the showroom and 70 participating in the activities, the exhibition turned out to be quite a success. The feedback received will be integrated in the development of the project and help us design new circular economy business models.

The showroom presented the prototypes of new modular lamps developed from industrial scrap material by the project partner Ona (Spain); the collaborative recycling campaign for electronic devices developed by Indumetal and Recyclia (Spain), and offered the visitors the chance to test our eco-labels and the CIRC4Life consumer mobile application, designed to encourage people towards more sustainable consumption habits.

The modular lamps generated a lot of interest and visitors were very eager to comment. Modularity was understood as something, which allows the user to disassemble and assemble to product at home. Many mentioned that they liked the design and valued the idea of a sustainable modular product. The most appreciated materials in the design of the lamp were wood and metal.

The overall response to the collaborative recycling campaign was positive. Some people mentioned having old devices at home as recycling them has not been topical for them and the eco-credit system was considered to potentially have an impact on their willingness to recycle.

After reading the storyboards and seeing the container mock-up, people were able describe the recycling process correctly. As a possible pain point for people to recycle mentioned the effort the process requires, specially if the expectations don't match the received eco-credits.

The idea of an eco-label to indicate the product’s sustainability was highly appreciated by visitors. However, when the user didn’t have any prior understanding of the project or the label and they were observing the individual label for the first time (with no particular interest towards sustainability), it was hard for them to understand or specify the core message of the label. 56,76% of visitors considered that the label would help them understand the sustainability information,while 37,84% were not sure and 8.11% disagreed. Sub-values (social impact etc) were poorly understood and there were mentions of mixed messages concerning the Eco-cost value and colors.

Visitors could also test the new CIRC4Life consumer mobile app aimed at encouraging sustainable choices developed by our project coordinator the Nottingham Trent University. A majority of respondents (78,94%) agreed that the app was able to communicate it’s value proposition well, and 79,08% considered that it will encourage people towards more sustainable behavior. However, most believed that the app is not ready to be introduced to the general public yet and the feedback section was considered confusing and not functioning well.

A second CIRC4Life showroom week is scheduled in another Laurea campus in the next few weeks.