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Durability as a techno-socio-economic concept

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

Felician Campean  and
Claudia Eckert
Felician Campean*
Affiliation:
University of Bradford, United Kingdom
Claudia Eckert
Affiliation:
The Open University, United Kingdom
*
F.Campean@Bradford.ac.uk

Abstract

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While the “useful life” of products plays an important role in the balance of sustainability and lifecycle assessment, the concept of durability, as the main measure of useful life, is still ill-defined. This paper critically considers the limitations of the current definitions and approaches to durability, by reflecting on the complex interactions of the viewpoints of engineering design teams, users, society and business economics. A new definition is proposed for durability relating to the useful life goals for a product within its techno-socio-economic context.

Keywords

sustainable designcircular economydurabilityreliability
Type
Design for Sustainability
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 4: DESIGN 2024 , May 2024 , pp. 1219 - 1228
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2024.

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