This article questions a French approach to stopping product obsolescence and looks to Japan for an alternative way – one that makes buying better products easier...
Public anger across Europe at the mountains of waste electrical products being smashed up for material recycling or for export to Africa has led French regulators to target businesses that plan premature obsolescence into their products. But German researchers previously concluded there is no evidence that such planned obsolescence exists: it’s just that, in a competitive market, customers have the choice to buy good, better and best quality. Perhaps we need to ask a different question, one that leads to a positive action instead of a negative list; one that is designed to identify not planned obsolescence but its opposite: "How can we identify which products offer planned longevity?"
See the full article proposing criteria to promote planned longevity.
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The European Remanufacturing Network (ERN) project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 645984.
The project was so successful that in January 2017 it was decided to create a European Remanufacturing Council funded by business membership subscriptions.
The ERN project (and the creation of a European Remanufacturing Council) was inspired by the earlier work of the Remanufacturing Industries Council in the USA.