The Shape of Return: The Dawn of the Vein Industry and the Idea of Circular Design (September 1998).

The Shape of Return: The Dawn of the Vein Industry and the Idea of Circular Design (September 1998).

At the end of the 1990s, Japan was in the midst of the "lost decade" of economic stagnation. At the same time, interest in environmental issues was steadily permeating society, and a new idea of a "recycling-oriented society" was emerging in the world of policy and industry. The challenge to change the structure of society had begun, moving away from the linear flow of "make, use, throw away" to the cyclical concept of "return" and "use again.

What is depicted is the concept of "venous industry," which is indispensable for connecting this circle. If the arterial industry is the blood vessel that produces products from resources, the venous industry is the flow that recovers, recycles, and recirculates them again - in other words, it is the industry that breathes life back into dying things. The key here lies not in the waste disposal stage, but rather in the far preceding stage, namely, the concept of "product design.

The key here lies not in the waste disposal stage, but in the design of the product, which goes far beyond that. These were not mere technical requirements, but design concepts to connect the story into the future. Products must be designed with the assumption that they do not end up in the factory, but return again after use. The concept of inverse manufacturing, or "reverse manufacturing," had already been introduced in the world of cameras, office automation equipment, and heavy machinery.

Behind this concept was the cyclical view that "the user is both the discounter and the provider of the next raw material. The design concept thus developed extends to simplification of parts and selection criteria of materials, and is transformed into a corporate ethic of green procurement. More and more suppliers were requesting ISO 14001 certification, and environmental performance was becoming a new quality standard.

The distribution industry also rode the wave, not only reducing packaging paper, but also assuming a new role as a collection point for products. The Department Stores Association published a white paper on the environment and sought a future vision of distribution that would support "eco-life. The role of consumers is also changing. No longer were consumers to "buy, use, and be done with it," but now they were to "return, entrust, and circulate again.

The concept of such a recycling society, which is now referred to as the "circular economy," was already in its infancy in 1998. The perspective of "integrating materials and information and incorporating the future of disposal into the design in advance" was a question that shook the ethics of consumer society. How we make something determines how it will end, and how it will end leads to how it will begin again.

The venous industry is an industry that transforms traces of the past into the future. There, waste is not the past, but the starting point of the future. The industry that makes such a story possible is the one that deserves to be called the "vein industry.