Glossary
Relab borrows its vocabulary from circular-economy research. Each term below is defined in ordinary words, with what Relab expects you to put in the field that carries it.
You do not need to learn any of this before you start. Every field that uses one of these terms carries a short version of the same explanation next to it.
Records
Section titled “Records”Record
Section titled “Record”One entry in Relab. A record is either a whole product or one component taken out of another record. Both hold the same fields.
Product
Section titled “Product”The whole item you started with, such as a cordless drill. A product is the top of a record tree: it has no parent.
Component
Section titled “Component”A part taken out of a product, such as a battery pack or a motor. A component is a record with a parent, and it can hold components of its own. The tree has no depth limit.
Create a component when the part is worth its own photos and notes. See When to create a child component for where to draw the line.
Teardown
Section titled “Teardown”One session in which somebody takes a product apart and records what they find. A finished teardown is a product record with its components under it.
Amount
Section titled “Amount”How many of a component the parent contains. Four identical screws in one housing are one component record with an amount of 4, not four records.
Measurements
Section titled “Measurements”Physical properties
Section titled “Physical properties”The item’s size and weight, measured as it sits in front of you. Width, height, and depth are in centimetres; weight is in grams. Record a sub-gram weight, such as a clip, as a decimal.
Leave a field empty if you did not measure it. An empty field means “not recorded”. Do not type
0 instead: Relab rejects it, because a zero claims the object really is flat or weightless.
Circularity
Section titled “Circularity”How well a product’s materials and parts can be recovered and used again once it reaches the end of its life. The three circularity notes record it.
Circularity notes
Section titled “Circularity notes”Three free-text observations you can add to any record. Write what you saw. An uncertain note is more useful than a confident guess. If you have neither, leave the note empty.
Recyclability
Section titled “Recyclability”What the parts are made of, and whether those materials can be separated and recovered.
Example: “Housing likely polypropylene, unconfirmed — no resin code moulded in.”
Disassemblability
Section titled “Disassemblability”How easily the product comes apart into its parts, and whether that damages them. Tools needed, glued or welded joins, and anything you had to break all count.
Example: “Opens with 6 Torx T10; battery is glued, had to be prised.”
Remanufacturability
Section titled “Remanufacturability”Whether whole parts could be cleaned up and used again in another product.
Example: “Motor and gearbox look reusable; control board is potted.”
Reference data
Section titled “Reference data”The shared lists you pick from: materials, categories, taxonomies, and product types. They exist so that two people describing the same thing use the same words.
If no entry fits, leave the field empty. Do not pick the closest match.
Product type
Section titled “Product type”What kind of thing the item is, picked from a shared list rather than typed. Most entries come from CPV.
Common Procurement Vocabulary, a standard European list of product categories. Relab uses it so that researchers can compare and count records across teardowns. You browse it by category and pick the closest match. The code itself never appears in the app.
Category
Section titled “Category”A branch of the product-type list, such as tools or furniture. Categories group product types. They are not a separate label on your record.
Taxonomy
Section titled “Taxonomy”One named classification scheme. CPV is a taxonomy. Relab can hold more than one.
Material
Section titled “Material”What a part is made of, picked from a shared list. Attach a material to the record it describes, which is usually a component rather than the whole product.
The project
Section titled “The project”9R framework
Section titled “9R framework”Nine strategies for keeping products and materials in use, from refusing a product outright to recovering its energy. They motivate the project and give the wordmark its nine.
Relab does not tag your records with an R-strategy. See The 9R framework for the strategies themselves.
Dataset release
Section titled “Dataset release”A published snapshot of Relab’s records, as files anybody can download and cite. Contributors are credited collectively, not against individual rows. See Dataset and the Dataset codebook.
Media and devices
Section titled “Media and devices”Photos, videos, and files attached to a record. Photos often carry more evidence than the form fields, so attach anything a later reader might want to check.
Research file
Section titled “Research file”A non-image file attached to a record, such as a spreadsheet or a measurement dataset. Relab stores these unchanged, without image processing.
RPi camera
Section titled “RPi camera”An optional Raspberry Pi camera rig that sends photos straight into a record. You set it up once per camera, and the integration stays off until you turn it on. See RPi camera integration.
Pairing code
Section titled “Pairing code”A six-character code the Raspberry Pi shows on its setup page or in its startup logs. Enter it in Relab once to connect that camera to your account.
Accounts
Section titled “Accounts”Verified
Section titled “Verified”An account whose email address has been confirmed. You can browse Relab without an account, and you can sign in without verifying. You need a verified email address to create records.
Two-step verification
Section titled “Two-step verification”A second check at sign-in, on top of your password, using a code from an authenticator app. Also called MFA (multi-factor authentication) or 2FA.
Profile visibility
Section titled “Profile visibility”Who can see your contributor profile: everyone, signed-in users only, or nobody. On the private setting your uploads stay anonymous.