The potential of design is considered essential for achieving a more sustainable and resource-efficient society and economy (KRU, 2024). This becomes even clearer in the widely recognized concept of the Circular Economy, where maintaining the functionality and value of materials, components, and product-service systems is paramount (KRU, 2023).

While the development of clean energy technologies and digital infrastructure highlights the need to maintain the functional spectrum of critical raw materials for supply security and organizational resilience, open-loop recycling continues to dominate, exemplified by alloys (Graedel et al., 2022). This leads to greater dissipative losses as materials are circulated more quickly through economies (Kümmerer, 2016). Due to their involvement in the early stages of product and system development, designers are well-positioned to drive advancements in material and product recycling (Reuter et al., 2019). However, material recyclability is influenced not only by more predictable factors such as product structure and material compatibility, but also by a wide range of external factors, including product lifespan and usage, the availability of logistics and recycling infrastructure, and prevailing economic conditions.

Although considerable progress has been made, there is still a lack of practical methods to effectively anticipate these factors in multidisciplinary product and system development, hindering progress toward a Closed-Loop Circular Economy. This poster highlights some challenges and key research questions.