Fabrizio Ceschin

Reusable packaging systems offer significant potential to reduce single-use packaging waste and its associated environmental impacts. While recent literature has investigated the factors that enable or hinder their adoption, implementation and diffusion, existing studies predominantly focus on Global North contexts, treat ’reuse’ broadly rather than differentiating between different reuse systems, and rarely provide an entrepreneurial perspective. This paper addresses this gap by examining the enablers and barriers faced by entrepreneurs in the Global South in implementing and scaling the refill-on-the-go reuse systems. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 18 entrepreneurs, the study provides an empirical and systematic account of the enablers and barriers affecting refill on-the-go entrepreneurship in the Global South. Findings suggest that the refill-on-the-go reuse system’s implementation and scaling are shaped by multiple interacting factors: environmental, economic, social, institutional, technological/informational, supply chain, ecosystem, and organisational. These factors do not operate in isolation but form a complex system that constrains or enables entrepreneurial action. The results highlight that entrepreneurs must move beyond short-term operational problem-solving and adopt a systemic and strategic approach, including improved coordination across partnerships, infrastructure, regulation, legitimacy and behaviour change, to ensure their success. In addition, policymakers and governments can play a pivotal role in addressing structural barriers through refill-specific regulations, standards, infrastructures and incentives, thereby strengthening uptake and legitimising the refill practice.

Limited research has explored the delivery of sustainable design in higher education globally. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate educational practices on the topic. Through an online survey, we investigated numerous aspects of units of study exposing topics related to sustainable design with a focus on contents, teaching methods and educational objectives. The survey was accessed by almost 400 educators in the field of sustainable design. The data show that a variety of teaching methods are used, with a critical role played by project-based learning in addition to traditional lectures. Most respondents rated all investigated intended learning outcomes as relevant or very relevant. In terms of contents and methods treated by the respondents, product eco-design and design for X are the most frequently taught methods. Educational approaches and teaching objectives are poorly affected by the discipline of the degree in which units of study are taught. In terms of contents, design degrees include approaches to sustainable design at the spatio-social level more frequently than engineering degrees do.

Achieving the mainstream adoption of circular packaging is essential for mitigating the environmental impacts of plastic waste. Its widespread adoption, however, remains hindered by significant user barriers. This study investigates the barriers to user adoption of upstream packaging solutions in Indonesia with the aim of reducing plastic packaging waste. Through a mixed-methods approach including case studies, expert workshops, and focus group discussions, nine key barriers were identified and analysed. These include inconvenience, resistance to changing habits and behaviours, higher costs and deposit schemes, contamination and hygiene concerns, wear and tear, functional and performance limitations, a lack of awareness about the environmental impacts, limited availability and variety, and a lack of trust. This research advances the literature by offering a detailed analysis of these barriers, categorising them into sociocultural, economic, contextual, and regulatory aspects. Additionally, barriers specific to Indonesia were identified such as a shift from being served to self-service refilling, some people not having smartphones, poor cellular signals in rural areas, a preference for plastic packaging due to its resale value, and a preference for cash payments due to limited access to credit or bank cards. The findings highlight the need for tailored, multidisciplinary strategies to overcome these barriers and promote the adoption of circular packaging solutions. This research provides valuable insights for researchers studying circular design, businesses seeking to innovate upstream packaging solutions, and policymakers aiming to develop regulations that support the adoption of circular packaging practices.

The use of digital technologies in Product Service Systems (PSSs) has increased in recent years. More and more smart devices are used in these models, collecting significant amounts of data to provide personalized and responsive products and services. However, data extraction has been causing disruptions in the social sphere, manipulating users, threatening democratic processes, and harming the social dimension of sustainability. To mitigate these problems associated with user data, some solutions on the market claim to take a more ethical approach. This article presents the preliminary results of a study aiming to understand what features in these solutions may favour the resilience of democratic processes and reduction in user manipulation due to personal data extraction and personalized activity. It also examines how designers can use them to develop smart PSSs that incorporate these elements and features in their process. Based on a literature review, three key elements relevant to personal data and democracy were assessed and applied to analyze 30 cases. The results provided a preliminary list of 46 features and 15 strategies for designers to embed these elements in the design of smart PSSs, as well as a conceptual framework. The study concludes with recommendations for future research.

It has been acknowledged that global challenges are in the way of delivering responsible innovation, as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals – a set of strategic objectives formulated by the United Nations General Assembly, to promote environmentally, societally, and economically-sustainable development. Design higher education has an important role to play in equipping the next generation of professionals with knowledge and skills for tackling pressing system-level challenges. Sustainable design research and ways of integrating emerging technologies in future design higher education curricula have, separately, attracted significant interest in recent years. However, comparatively little effort has concentrated on the role that a broader range of technologies can play in shaping the design higher education provision with system-level sustainability challenges in mind. This article presents an analysis of 180 Design MSc dissertation projects, implemented at a UK higher education institution between 2019 and 2022, focusing on research challenges of societal and industrial relevance. The data set includes a mapping of dissertation projects to relevant technologies, industry sectors, and Sustainable Development Goals. Data analysis suggests a balanced distribution of projects across a range of sustainability goals, although under-represented thematic areas have also been highlighted. The methods adopted for this study, based on a systematic study of relational patterns reflecting associations of dissertation projects with technologies, industry sectors, and sustainability goals, provide a blueprint for future data-driven research on the role played by technologies within student projects in design higher education, with an emphasis on their relevance to sustainable innovation challenges.

The discourse on sustainability has reached a point where the present common view is that there is a need for radical transformational change in how human society operates. In parallel with the changes taking place in socio-ecological contexts and increased theoretical understanding of implications of these changes, the response from the broader society in general and from business specifically has also evolved in the past decades with an increasing pace. Design as a primary function for innovation in business, and increasingly in government and in other social organizational units including local communities has been engaged with different aspects of sustainability discourse and practice since mid-twentieth century. This chapter presents a short “evolutionary history” of the Design for Sustainability (DfS) field starting from these early days of systematic engagement and provides insights on the emerging directions in the field. We present the DfS approaches that emerged in the past decades, and propose and discuss a framework that synthesizes the evolution of the DfS field, and finally we reflect on the future research challenges of DfS.