2017 Plate About

The 2nd Conference on Product Lifetimes and the Environment (PLATE) took place in Delft, Netherlands, 8-10 November, 2017. PLATE 2017 was the second international conference to address product lifetimes in the context of sustainability. It brought together researchers, designers, practitioners, and educators from a broad range of traditions and communities from all around the world.

An increase in product lifetimes and a move to a more circular economy are increasingly recognized as essential elements in resource efficiency, waste reduction and low carbon strategies for sustainability. For this reason, the first PLATE conference was held in 2015 at Nottingham Trent University, UK, which brought together over 100 academic researchers and industry representatives with a shared interest in tackling the detrimental effect of our consumption through product longevity. To continue this success, the PLATE 2017 Conference was held at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology.

The conference provided a great opportunity to review the current state of research in this emerging field of knowledge. Academic researchers, industry representatives and policy stakeholders were invited to share their experiences and debate the implications of product longevity for environmental, economic and social sustainability.