The creative team behind Renova: Luiza Braga Campos, Angela Corrado, Anika Rieth, Brenda Villafana, Mariah Giacchetta, Hacer Beril Beden
Institution: Politecnico di Milano
Course and Discipline: Product Service System Design
The Renova project aims to design a sustainable business model for city regeneration concerning the modern social and economical problems that we encounter. We aim to put our perspective on the issue of construction waste.
Renova is a service that deconstructs, buys, and resells pre-installed construction products and fixtures on its online platform to be used in new construction projects. It aims to reduce the waste generated on home and businesses renovations by salvaging products and connecting them to future users. In this context, products refer to all general fixtures, including the ones of kitchens, bathroom and lighting, as well as wood parquet flooring and engineered wood flooring.
Impact & opportunity
As an emerging market, Brazil is expected to grow 7% in the next 3 years in the construction sector and has a lot of opportunity and space to adapt to circular business models.
Overview of the issue and the approach
Construction waste is the number one contributor to solid waste in the world (Osmani, 2011), it fills our local landfills and wastes our precious natural resources. The biggest cause of private construction waste comes from the renovations that we do to our homes and businesses (Osmani, 2011).
The methodology aims to bring together design, business and technology to provide a meaningful and ready-for-market service, by focusing on the challenges that the geographical context brings and turning them into opportunities.
Over the course of this challenge, we explored the market, studied our users, created concepts, prototyped the most promising ones, tested with users and built a viable business plan and a development roadmap.
After following a four month design process, Renova service is a fully developed business concept.
The essence of the solution
Salvaging good conditioned materials through deconstruction and a platform to bring them together with potential buyers, turning waste into resource.
The stakeholders in the project
Customers (seller and buyers)
Private contractors, construction and deconstruction companies (partners)
Truck Leasing Agencies
