Keep products for as long as possible at their highest value on the Value Hill

The idea of a circular economy is inspiredby eco-systems in which the waste ofone system is food for another (EllenMacArthur Foundation, 2013). Circularbusinesses aim to retain a product's added value for as long as possible, if not forever. In the context of the Value Hill, value is added while the product moves "uphill" and circular strategies keep the product at its highest value (top of the hill) for as long as possible. Products are designed to be long lasting and are suitable for maintenance and repair, thus slowing resource loops (Bocken et al., 2016) and prolonging the use phase of the product. When a product is ready to start it's downhill journey, it is done as slowly as possible so that its useful resources can still be of service to other systems as illustrated in the Value Hill below.

In summary, the path that products take while travelling up and down the Value Hill is divided in three phases. The pre-use phase (mining, production, distribution) is displayed on the left a value is added in every step and the product moves uphill. The second phase is the in-use phase and is depicted at the top of the hill. Here the value of a product is at its highest. And the third phase is the post-use phase, where the product loses different business activities take place value as it moves downhill. However, by feeding the complete product or its components back into a previous phase (e.g. by providing second hand products they flow directly back into the use phase), value is retained. In every phase different business activities take place.