A module on designing for disassembly, run against an object so ordinary it is almost invisible: the car remote, and how many screws stand between a dead battery and a working one.
Work through a disassembly checklist against a real product and see how badly it scores. How many fasteners, how many types, are the materials labelled, can the parts be separated without destroying them, does the warranty actively discourage repair.
Why it seemed promising
Circularity is usually argued at the level of policy and material flows, where nothing is falsifiable. A checklist against one object in your hand is the opposite: it produces a number, and the number is embarrassing.
What was actually built
Teardown notes, a completed design-for-disassembly audit, and the positioning work around it.
Why it stopped or changed direction
It was a short module and it ended. Nothing was redesigned off the back of the audit, which is the gap between noticing a problem and doing anything about it.
What survived
A reflex to count fasteners. It is a crude proxy and it is almost always right about whether anyone intended the thing to be repaired.
