Designing for the Circular Economy

Back to all news

What is a circular economy?

A circular economy is an alternative to a traditional ‘take, make, waste’ linear economy in which resources are kept in use for as long as possible via repair, repurposing, upgrading, etc., to extract their maximum value. Recovering and regenerating components and materials at the end of a product’s life constitutes the final circle.

Our approach to circular economy

Stoane Lighting luminaires are designed for long life. They have a full warranty for 5 years and we agree to a duty of care for a further 20 years. The foundation to this is the deployment of Circular Economy principles in product design and the provision of a repair / upgrade service.

1. Product: flexibility in luminaire design (multiple fixing holes, ample leeway with mechanical space and thermals) and components made in-house or locally sourced allow for repair to original specification of upgrade with light qualities, beam width, control options or mounting methodology.

2. Service: we can carry out luminaire upgrades in our factory; in fact we have been doing so since 2003. What if a factory return is impossible? We now have a mobile workshop which can travel to an end-user where down time is an issue, with a suite of luminaires to swap over temporality. We simply make the necessary repairs in our mobile workshop then swap back again.

Designing the ZTA for the Circular Economy

We have prepared a detailed paper showing how our ZTA range has been designed with the Circular Economy in mind. The paper explores the materials we use, where they come from (and how many km), our 25 year Duty of Care and how the fittings can be upgraded at any stage of their life cycle.

READ: Designing the ZTA for the Circular Economy.