Towards synergies between local repairers, citizens, designers, and public actors: the REVALUE project

The on-going race towards innovation and growth, continuously sustained by new products, has shaped a "throwaway era" overwhelmed by waste. The European economy is surprisingly wasteful in its model of value creation and sustains a take-make-dispose system. To face with this challenge, the European Waste Framework Directive suggests a hierarchy for waste treatment based on the 3R: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This paper aims to present the REVALUE research program. REVALUE contributes to the Reduce and Reuse objective as it proposes local and adaptive strategies articulated around repair workshops. It is based on the assumption that improving collaboration between producers, citizens, repair workshops and public actors enables the emergence of eco-innovative waste management at a local scale supported by adapted business models. The overall objective of REVALUE is to develop innovative, self-sustaining repair networks at the city-level. This will be achieved by 1) defining the initial state of the urban waste management system (at the technical, financial, economic and organizational level), 2) stimulating the (co)design of innovative products and repair business models, 3) facilitating innovation by and for urban stakeholders through an online toolkit, 4) boosting the uptake of the online toolkit and best practices in Europe and beyond. This project proposes a multidisciplinary approach bringing together complementary expertise in waste regulation, (circular) business models and strategies, engineering design, organizational change and social sciences.