Circthread

Building the Digital Thread for Circular Economy Product, Resource & Service

CIRCTHREAD will provide the necessary information so that electrical appliances remain longer in the economic circuit. Access to critical information about each device allows improving existing information about the device, thus helping to make a decision about recycling, reusing or repairing, thus promoting economic and environmental advantages.

About Circthread

Specific objectives and technological applications

CIRCTHREAD project aims to provide the information that the user needs so that electrical appliances remain in the economic circuit for longer. Access to critical information about each individual device can help in this process. The project’s objective is to unlock access to data and enhancing it as decision information for actors across and outside the extended product life cycle. To do this CircThread will deliver a Circular Digital Thread methodology, a framework for facilitating information flow exchanges across the extended life cycle chain of Products, Components, their Materials and Chemicals data, and related Circularity, Environmental, Social and Economic Information.

Project's main objectives

Tools & Methods

The CircThread project’s main objective is to unlock access to data now in silo’s, and enhancing it as decision information for actors across and outside the extended product life cycle. To do this CircThread will deliver a Circular Digital Thread methodology, a framework for facilitating information flow exchanges across the extended life cycle chain of Products, Components, their Materials and Chemicals data, and related Circularity, Environmental, Social and Economic Information. The core of the project is to create data linkages between product chain, value chain, asset chain and life cycle chains based on a Product information Catalogue, and enable information exchanges via data contracts governed by secure and reliable management standards.

Innovation

CircThread will bring the benefits of a circular economy closer to reality by implementing seven innovations:

Creating a digital identity of your appliances and linking all parties across the life cycle
Making it possible to link information from the manufacturer to the ‘Appliance Digital Identity’
Allowing repair companies to recover as many parts as possible from used appliances
Empowering collectors to decide what is best for used appliances: reuse, remanufacturing or recycling loops
Making a continuous improvement planning process for appliance lifespan extension
Making it easier to know what chemicals and critical raw materials are in appliances for recycling purposes
Empowering citizens to make better purchasing and use decisions for repair and lifespan

Impact

The expected impact for the work programme is to enable improved decision taking accelerating Circularity and Carbon emissions reductions including:

Enhanced life extensions of products by better understanding of in use failures and maintenance needs
Improved understanding of the quality of end-of-life products for spare parts buy-backs to support right to repair

Improved assessment of circularity routes by waste management and recycling companies by delivering enhanced product composition data

Improved materials and chemicals tracing of products and components for safer products and identifying Critical Raw Materials cycles,
Empowering decisions by citizens and citizen organizations by providing direct access to product performance information

https://circthread.com/