ReBear

About

The objective of this project was to redesign a selected product into a "next-generation" sustainable product/ service system. This was accomplished by conducting comprehensive research and applying a life cycle thinking approach to our design process.

Process

We began our project by selecting a product to redesign, which in our case was the stuffed animal. Following research into the environmental impact of stuffed animals, including some into children's toys, we found some alarming statistics, including:

• The toy industry creates upwards of 26 million tonnes of CO2 each year

• 80% of toys end up in landfill, incinerators, or the ocean

• Kids lose interest in 25% of their toys after just one week.

And considering that stuffed animals are made from textiles, the impacts of that industry should now also be accounted for, making stuffed animals a unique opportunity to have a positive impact in two separate industries.

Research

Issues and Opportunities for Innovation

After choosing our product, we built out our research across the life cycle of stuffed animals to help us search for typical issues and opportunities for innovation. These categories were:

1. Raw Materials and Extraction - Types of materials used in product and packaging, environmental impact of each material, amount of virgin and recycled material used, what could be more sustainable choices/ replacement in terms of materials

   1. Typically polyester or cotton, both can be recycled and virgin materials

2. Design and Manufacturing - Design for disassembly, design for recycling, design for light-weighting, design for easy repair, maintenance, upgrade etc.. Manufacturing processes used, treatment and painting processes, waste produced during production, energy and other resources used, environmental impact associated with these processes 

   1. Long, complex supply chains = high transportation emissions

   2. Often made under unfair labor conditions

   3. Toxic Dyes

3. Packaging and Distribution - Type of packaging material used, amount of packaging material, processes, packaging disposal issue, scope for designing reusable (second use) packaging, scope for minimizing packaging material, using low impact material etc.

   1. Boxes, bags, wrapping

   2. Transport via Ground, Air, Sea

   3. Most shipped fully stuffed

4. Usage - Usage experiences, usage-related issues, environmental impact associated with the usage, waste produced during use, resources required (energy, water, detergent, fuel etc.) during use, shorter life span,  environmental impact associated with usage, life span, why it reaches to end of life; is the user using in the right way; does usage pattern determine the life of the product; is it possible to use in a better way?  

   1. Will shed microplastics during washing

   2. Emotional Support

5. End of Life - Disposal-related issues with product and each material, possibility of recycling, reuse, remanufacture, what parts can be reused, biodegradability, etc.

   1. Hard to recycle due to mixed materials

   2. Parents admit to throwing them out if toys are no longer played with

   3. Not biodegradable in landfill

Life Cycle Analysis of Current Product

As a case study, we looked at one of the most well-known brands in the stuffed animal space, Build A Bear Workshop. Their approach to the market was novel when they began, basically allowing people to fully customize their stuffed animals with a wide range of options. We went with the traditional Timeless Bear, one of their top sellers, an outfit, and an accessory to emulate the typical purchase made by a customer.

Starting with the raw materials, the biggest issues here come from the use of plastic in just about everything on offer in the store. It’s basically all plastic, and virgin material at that, there is no evidence to Build a bear using any recycled materials.

The bear, the stuffing, the thread, the clothes are all polyester, with some of the shoes including Thermoplastic rubber or TPR. The plastic pieces are typically pet, pvc, or acrylic. The voice recorders use ABS plastic for the housing, it’s all plastic. 

The one thing they do have going for them in this area is that they’ll sometimes use cardboard houses at the stores for customers to carry the bears home in, but recently they’ve shifted more towards LDPE bags, so it’s not really looking up there.

Then we get to the Manufacturing stage. The issues here are in the form of the processing that happens. So emissions from plastic production leading to carcinogenic effects. Washing the fabrics to prepare them for use leads to microplastics released into the water system with the Dying processes further impacting that. We can also consider that these parts are made in places where workers are consistently treated poorly with lack of livable wages. The supply chains are pretty vague, and a lack of irregular factory inspections could just proliferate these issues further.

Next in the Transportation step, we see a very large footprint. First the fabric needs to get to the manufacturing factory, then the finished goods are sent to the port and shipped overseas. Build a bear operates a little over 500 locations world wide, with locations on every continent, so these things are getting sent just about everywhere.

Then from the port, the products are sent to distribution centers, then further and finally on to retail locations.

the user section is where a few interesting things start to happen with these bears. 

For one, because build a bear has worked so hard at establishing that emotional connection between product and user, they do see customers keeping the bears for a significant amount of time. Our LCA looked at only a 5 year time span, but it is not uncommon for users to hold on to their stuffed animals for decades which is great to see.

That being said, there are some issues during the care of these bears that are of note. Because they are made of that polyester fur, there is a significant amount of microplastic shedding that occurs when the bears are washed. 

And it should be taken into consideration that, even though our model here doesn’t use the voice recorder, that would need to be taken out both before a wash and when the battery goes out on it, which could be as soon as a year, depending on the frequency of use

Then finally, the end of life options for these aren’t great unfortunately. A majority, about 75%, go to landfill, and none of the components are biodegradable, so they’re just going to sit for hundreds of years. 

Because of the combination of materials and some regulations around things like plush toys, they also can’t be recycled either.

Some do find their way to donation centers and second-hand shops, or resold to collectors even. But that 75% going to the landfill is a hard number to think about at the end of the day.

Potential Project Directions

From our research on potential spaces for innovation, we developed a few possible ideas to build our own project around (some had more potential than others), including:

1. Kelp forest rebuilding

   1. made from kelp fabric

   2. in the shape of the animals that live in that ecosystem

   3. can be returned at end of life and prepared to be sent back to the ocean floor to offer structures for new kelp to grow or ecosystem support?

2. Textiles made from invasive species

   1. kudzu/ water hyacinth based

   2. removal supports local ecosystems

3. Biodiverse Cotton Farm Network

   1. Network of small organic farms growing heritage cotton varieties

   2. Preserves genetic diversity

   3. Polyculture farming supports pollinators.

   4. Direct farmer partnerships

4. Less water or Waterless dying

   1. dyed using specific techniques to eliminate water usage and pollution

      1. Indigenous ideas:

         1. Fermentation/ mashing

      2. Supercritical CO2 dyeing

      3. Air Dyeing

5. Solar-powered micro-manufacturing plants

   1. shipping container-sized

   2. can be deployed in small communities to offer an economic boon

   3. communities own the means of production

   4. they set prices and products are sold on an online market place

      1. profits create more micro-manufacturing cubes

6. Designed to teach repair as a skill

   1. proceeds sponsor repair cafes where locals can learn to repair their things

   2. patterns available open-source

Our Solution

Our solution took the form of ReBear, an outlet for discarded clothing and textiles to catch those resources on their way to landfill. Our service flow would look something like this:

Ok lets talk about this spiderweb of a system here. We’re going to start at the top left, work downwards then across and back up, basically counterclockwise. At the top we have our inflow of materials, that’s going to be coming from places like direct customer orders, assorted donations, perhaps even collecting things that secondhand shops can’t sell. 

These will all go into our raw materials pool, which will then get sorted into piles of things we either can use or can’t, and I’ll go into what that means shortly.

Then we’ll give the materials we can use a washing, just so we know for sure that they’re clean. Ideally we’d like to see a processing center that utilizes renewable systems like solar and rain water capture to offset some to most of our utility needs.

After everything is cleaned, it will go to processing. This is where seams will get ripped to turn the clothing into usable materials forms, buttons and hardware removed and sorted, basically getting all of our materials in place, our mise en place for our cooks, to make the construction process seamless.

Here is where a split happens in our little river system. Usable materials, like larger pieces of fabric will get sent towards the construction of the bears, and smaller unusable pieces will go directly to the processing for our filling. 

Then during the construction process, the teddy bear is fully realized, using buttons and bits from the clothes we’ve sourced as eyes or noses in an effort to solely utilize materials we’ve been given and never having to order any additional plastic pieces. Then any scraps that are no longer viable for construction can move to the filling inventory as well. 

When the bears are completed, they’ll get shipped to the customer. I should note here that in an effort to minimize the transportation footprint, we’d likely start super locally, maybe just in one city, then only expanding further if we’ve found the capacity, but never branching outside of the US. 

Rewinding a bit to the filling inventory, this is where our scraps and effective “waste” will get processed and chopped up to be potentially sent to affordable housing non-profits as affordable insulation, or into something like furniture manufacturing, or automotive manufacturing as upholstery filling. Extending the life of the material even further outwards.

Red List

This is going to include things spandex, elastane or lycra, which will be difficult to process due to the elastic fibers potentially jamming up machinery. Garments with bonded seams, glued components or fused layers will make material recovery very difficult as well. Anything that is chemically treated, like with flame-retardants in some children’s clothing and bedding, these are going to need to be rejected outright due to potential further health risks. Careful attention should be made to heavy metal usage and types of dyes. Leather and suede might be ok to use on the bears in a case-by-case basis, maybe for specific customer order, but it can’t be pushed further downstream to filling. And PVC or polyurethane materials should be avoided as well.

New LCA

Materials-wise, there is no new raw material production. Everything we use comes from upcycling and reuse, which means our raw material footprint is a zero here, and I don’t know if this is a potential way to look at this, but because we’re diverting the materials from landfill, we could factor in the footprint of that as a negative number towards our final product. 

With the impacts of materials being negated, Manufacturing and Transportation are going to be the biggest contributors to our overall score. We’ll still need water and electricity for washing, processing, and construction. But if we implement that rain capture and solar, then we can mitigate that aspect as well. And then we still need to move products around, so transportation may be unavoidable, but since we’re shooting for a small scale first, we can use EVs for local deliveries, or even have pickup days at farmers markets where customers can both drop off donations and pick up orders.

In the User’s hands, the bears are now singular, 1 of 1 keepsakes. The emotional attachment is high here, coming from their own clothes, or potentially a loved ones, and this will help to promote the keeping of the bear for a good amount of time. 

Then we should keep in mind the filling as a product here. Even though it’s a “waste Product” it’s still a product with an intended use. So the user phase on this will need to depend on where it goes, but we can assume that it won’t need to be washed or require any maintenance once it’s been installed. 

And then our end of life considerations include a take back program with a tag sewn onto each bear with a qr code that would offer instructions to the customers on how they can get in touch with us to start that process. 

The biggest end of life aspect will come from the Filling used as insulation and upholstery. We can’t unfortunately control where the final products end up, but what we can do is talk to the potential buyers, see how they typically deal with that, and then work with the ones who have the best idea on end of life scenarios planned out. But there are cases of these things being downcycled into acoustic paneling, gym mats, or other products like that which could keep the material in the cycle of use for even longer.

Okala EcoDesign Strategies

So in innovation we hit about 50%, rethinking the benefits of both stuffed animals and discarded clothing, our product is a service that reworks textile waste back into the system, and through repair education, we share our processes outwardly.

We hit 100% of the  low-impact materials section by structuring that red list accordingly, only using materials gained through the upcycling of waste, using renewable energy for our processing, and considering our own waste as a product.

We touch on everything in the optimized manufacturing section by creating few, simple, and consistent products, and by considering our “Waste” as product again

We hit about 75% of Efficient distribution by keeping our range small, minimizing transport.

We get all of Low-impact Use through renewable energy sources and our simple and consistent processing systems

Most of optimized product lifetime is worked in through that emotional connection, the take back program,

• by keeping the bears easily made, we aid in the teaching of repair efforts

• The whole product is a second life for the clothes that they’ll be made of

• And of course it’s timeless in design

And finally in end of life, we have the takeback program,

• the bears are designed to be easily repairable, which means they can be dismantled easily

• And The next life of the bears will either create future bears, or they will go downstream to be used as filling

Impact and Learning

This project tested our design thinking skills in so many different ways, and considering the full life cycle of the product made our final solution into a holistic business system that is imminently possible without much upfront costs or special equipment.

The biggest things for me during this project were:

1. Performing comprehensive Life Cycle Analyses

   1. Realizing how complex everyday products are when it comes to what they're made from, how far they travel during both the manufacturing and distribution processes

2. Being inspired by the Okala EcoDesign Strategy Wheel

   1. Keeping these in mind while designing our system created space for unique problem solving and rally thoughtful solutions.