Why the Upgradability is a Present-day Opportunity for Designing Sustainable Systems?

Abstract : The accelerating rhythm of products renewal causes accelerated exploitation of materials and energy. To remedy this, this paper considers upgradability from the point of view of functionality: the goal is to design an upgrade scenario taking into account a multi-criteria assessment: environmental impact-cost-attractiveness for the consumers. An experiment based on the UpMoS tool and data from the past of electronic device simulates different design hypotheses. With a non-systematic integration of known developments and upgrading design tips like recycling, improving “by plug” and oversizing to delay replacing, the results show that upgradability is a present-day opportunity to develop sustainable systems. Environmental gains are in the order of 5%. Others promising design levers to obtain much more positive results are presented in discussion.