Dr Vassilia Orfanou, PhD, Post Doc, COO
Writes for the Headline Diplomat eMagazine, LUDCI.eu
Introduction: Beyond “Use‑and‑Discard”
In a world where your smartphone feels ancient after two years, your blender mysteriously dies the day after warranty, and fast fashion changes faster than the weather, a quieter revolution is brewing: products designed to last.
“Design-for-longevity” might sound like corporate jargon, but it’s quickly becoming a serious strategy for moving beyond the linear “take-make-waste” economy. Think of it as giving products a second, third, or even fourth life—without needing a time machine.
The challenge? While most people nod enthusiastically at the idea of long-lasting goods, the tools, testing protocols, and standards to make it happen are still catching up.
That’s where product testing, verification, and durability certification step into the spotlight: because if you say a product lasts, you’d better prove it—otherwise it’s just wishful thinking.
Making Longevity Measurable: The Emerging Landscape of Product Testing
What does “product longevity” really mean? In academic terms, it includes durability (how materials endure), upgradability (how a device evolves), and reparability (how easily it can be fixed).
From a testing perspective, this implies a shift: not just whether a product works today, but how it will perform after years of use, maintenance, repair and reuse. For example, the study “Product lifetime approaches in life cycle assessments of circular economy strategies” emphasises that lifetime modelling in LCAs is sensitive and crucial to circular economy claims.
Testing regimes are evolving too: manufacturers are beginning to integrate accelerated aging tests, modular upgrade verification, and disassembly/repair trials — all aimed at validating design‑for‑longevity.
Case Studies & Design Frameworks
Recent research is beginning to map out what “design-for-longevity” actually looks like in practice—and the message is clear: longevity is a design challenge, a material challenge, and a consumer challenge all at once.
Several frameworks now help designers embed longevity into products. For instance, the “Design for Longevity: A Framework to Support the Designing of a Product’s Optimal Lifetime” outlines practical methods for designers to identify optimal lifetime horizons and determine when to design for repair versus replacement.
In textiles, the paper “Design‑ability in the Circular Economy of Textiles” explores how designers’ competencies influence textile product longevity — pointing out that material choice, user‑repairability and cultural attitudes play a role.
Meanwhile, a consumer‑facing study “Consumer Perceptions of Product Lifetimes and Labelling: Implications for Introducing a Durability Label” found that while consumers say they want durable products, they often lack clear markers or labels that help them compare durability claims.
Taken together, these studies make one thing crystal clear: designing for longevity isn’t just about clever ideas or good intentions—it’s about rigorous testing, independent verification, and tangible proof.
Without these, a promise to “last longer” is just marketing fluff. To truly embed durability into products, designers, manufacturers, and policymakers need measurable evidence that a product will survive real-world use, can be repaired, and can stand the test of time.
In other words, longevity only becomes meaningful when it’s proven, certified, and trusted—and this is exactly where a European independent body becomes invaluable, providing impartial certification and rigorous testing to turn durability claims into verifiable reality.
Why Longevity Matters: Environmental, Economic and Social Impacts
Independent verification doesn’t just validate durability claims; it creates confidence, comparability, and accountability across industries. Without it, “long-lasting” remains a slogan, not a standard.
And the stakes are not merely technical — they are environmental, economic and social.
Environmentally, longer-lasting products reduce the need for virgin materials, cut emissions across the product lifecycle, and delay waste streams. Tools such as life-cycle assessment (LCA) make the impact visible: a product that performs reliably for twice as long doesn’t just save buyers money; it halves the environmental burden of replacement. When scaled across sectors like electronics, textiles or medical devices, lifetime extension becomes one of the most powerful levers for reducing resource demand.
Economically, longevity is already emerging as a competitive differentiator. Companies that offer repairability, upgradeability, modular parts and long-term support don’t merely sell products; they build systems that retain value over time. This reduces the total cost of ownership for users and strengthens brand trust. In markets where procurement teams increasingly factor durability into purchasing decisions, longevity becomes a strategic advantage, not a constraint.
Socially, the shift is cultural. Consumers are moving away from disposable habits toward value, ethics and sustainability; but they still struggle to identify which products genuinely last. The consumer research is clear: people want durability, but the signals must be credible, transparent and verifiable. A durability label backed by independent testing would not only empower consumers; it would reward producers who design responsibly.
Taken together, the case for longevity reaches far beyond design studios and research labs. It shapes how we consume, how we compete, and how we steward resources in a world facing material constraints and environmental pressure. And that’s precisely why testing, certification and independent standards will play such a decisive role in the circular economy: they turn durability from aspiration into measurable reality and from marketing into trust.
The Hurdles: From Intention to Certified Reality
First, fragmentation of standards and testing protocols. A comparative analysis of circular-economy assessment methods found that while tools tend to produce similar conclusions, their underlying assumptions vary widely — from durability scoring in textiles to longevity criteria in appliances to modularity indices in electronics. Without harmonised methods, benchmarking becomes difficult: a “durable” washing machine, a “long-life” laptop, and a “repairable” jacket may all tick different boxes defined by different actors.
Second, resource constraints — particularly for small and mid-size manufacturers. Testing for long service life (e.g., 10-15 year mechanical cycles, accelerated aging or thermal shock testing) is both capital-intensive and time-consuming. A small furniture maker cannot easily simulate a decade of wear; an electronics startup may struggle to finance accelerated stress tests; a textile brand may lack access to accredited durability labs entirely. Without support infrastructure, longevity can become a privilege of scale.
Third, consumer and market alignment. As one consumer study showed, people consistently claim to value durable products, yet purchasing behaviour is shaped by price sensitivity, aesthetics and convenience long before durability labels enter the equation. Even when labels exist, interpretation is uneven. A “10-year guarantee” means different things across product categories; a “repairable” phone may still lose out to a cheaper, sleeker alternative. In fast-moving retail settings, durability competes with impulse.
Fourth, product obsolescence and technological pace. In high-tech sectors — medical devices, smartphones, robotics, or battery systems — physical life is often shorter than functional obsolescence. A well-built device can last 10 years, yet software updates, shifting standards, or evolving connectivity protocols may render it unusable long before failure. Designing for longevity, therefore, requires not just robust hardware, but strategies such as modular upgrades, backward-compatible software, replaceable components and open standards that allow products to stay relevant.
And finally, circular logistics. Even when products are designed for longevity, repair, refurbishment, or material recovery, the infrastructure to support those pathways is inconsistent. For textiles, the bottleneck is sorting. For electronics, it’s spare parts availability and right-to-repair rules. For medical devices, regulatory pathways make second-life markets complex. The circular system around the product must exist for the product to be truly circular.
The Future: Where Testing, Certification, and Circularity Converge
The path forward for products—and for the circular economy—is becoming clear: testing, certification, and ecosystem alignment must work together to make longevity real and verifiable.
Just as safety certifications give confidence in medical devices or industrial equipment, robust durability testing and standardized longevity certification will give consumers and businesses alike confidence in circular economy claims. Meanwhile, emerging technologies like digital twins allow real-time monitoring of usage and wear, turning
design‑for‑longevity from theory into measurable reality. Research on end-of-life batteries, for example, shows how data-driven insights can validate durability across real-world conditions.
But technology alone isn’t enough. Designers, testers, regulators, and consumers all need a shared language for longevity—a common standard to measure, report, and verify. When these elements align, products are no longer simply used and discarded; durability, reparability, upgradeability, and end-of-life recovery become embedded in the ecosystem, with testing and certification as the proof points that promise is delivered.
The result is clear: an economy where products that last—and can be trusted to last—truly lead.
Conclusion: Durability as a Design Imperative
In the circular economy vision, waste isn’t just managed—it’s designed out of the system entirely. And one of the simplest (and most radical) levers is simply making things that last. Longevity is the quiet superhero here: it doesn’t shout, it just keeps working.
But designing for longevity is only half the story. The other half is the unglamorous but essential work of testing, validating, certifying and communicating that longevity in a way people can trust. Because a product that claims to last forever without evidence is just… marketing poetry.
When products are no longer engineered to fail first and replaced often—but to endure, adapt and be repaired—we move from a throwaway culture to a value-keeping one. The result isn’t just less waste; it’s more resilience, affordability, innovation and common sense (remember that?).
For designers, engineers and testers, the question is no longer “Could this product last?”—that’s the easy part. The real question is: “How can we prove it, measure it, certify it and communicate it as part of a circular economy?” Because in the future, products won’t just perform—they’ll justify their existence.
Call to action
In the circular economy of tomorrow, the product that lasts will lead. Not because it’s trendy, but because replacing things endlessly is exhausting—for wallets, supply chains and the planet. Manufacturers will need to think beyond immediate performance and start baking longevity, repairability and upgradeability directly into product strategy. That means durability testing, modular components and design decisions that age gracefully instead of catastrophically.
Independent bodies and validators have a starring role too. Without accessible, harmonized frameworks for testing and certification, durability becomes a guessing game. Standards create the common language that lets everyone—engineers, regulators, retailers and repair shops—measure and compare resilience without needing a PhD in product semantics.
And consumers (and procurement teams), you’re not off the hook either. Don’t let shiny marketing do all the talking. Ask for proof. Look for testing data. Reward products that can be repaired instead of mourned. Because in the future, the winners won’t be the flashy, the fragile or the fast-obsolete—they’ll be the enduring, the upgradeable and the sensibly engineered. Longevity isn’t just a virtue; it’s becoming a competitive strategy.