That Old Fridge Leaves a Major Footprint
For 150 years our industrial system has been based on the take-make-dispose model: goods were manufactured from raw materials extracted from scratch, then sold, used, and finally disposed of as waste.
Only recently business models have been redesigned by integrating the concept of circularity, which includes increasing the durability of products, one of the fundamental requirements included in the the so-called European EcoDesign Directive (2009/125/EC), the 7th Framework Program (EU 2013), and a 2015 Communication of European Commission, as well as one of operating principles of European Agency for the Environment (2016).
The stated goal is to counteract the indiscriminate use of resources, considered limitless in the business-as-usual model, where disposable consumer goods have generated huge amounts of waste. Durability calls for the extension of the life cycle of products and the value they embody, through the adoption of new business models, which, for instance, are more oriented to service delivery than product-making, and seek the reuse of products and/or their components, and higher recycling rates for all materials.
This strategy has its origin in the need to place disincentives against the planned obsolescence of products, a production concept born shortly after mass production, when supply exceeded demand and products remained unsold. To solve this problem, manufacturers decreased the lifespan of products, forcing consumers to keep buying new goods to replace old ones.
The environmental impact of planned obsolescence is clearly negative, in terms of consumption of virgin raw materials and generation of waste. So today governments and EU institutions have imposed minimum standards in terms of maintenance, repair and availability of spare parts, requiring manufacturers to follow sustainable design criteria: minimum guaranteed lifetime of appliances, just-in-time availability of spare parts, modularity, disassembling/ repairability options, etc.
A question needs to be raised, though. Is extending the life of the products always the best way to reduce the environmental footprint of white goods? When the durability of a product is increased, by extending its useful life or regenerating it, one must also consider the environmental impact created by the prolonged use of an appliance which may be less energy-efficient than a comparable product made today. This is especially the case with energy-intensive products or, in general, for products that create most of their environmental impact in the utilization phase. In a recent study we conducted by using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to measure the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) in conformity with the requirements of the European Commission, we found that the objective of product durability can give excellent results in environmental terms, but that this varies along categories of products, so that for certain appliances like ovens or refrigerators, overly extending the life cycle would imply a significant decrease in energy efficiency, so as to cancel out the effect of other kinds of tangible environmental benefits, notably in terms of reduced waste disposal, and of the energy consumption required for manufacturing a new product.
In the light of these results, the way forward to define effective environmental regulations would be make a thorough evaluation of the alternatives on the basis of a credible method that shows all the possible environmental trade-offs, without forgetting the fundamental role that consumers play in a culture revolving around consumerism. A current example of best practice is the incentive provided by the Swedish government to its citizen-consumers. Sweden recently reduced VAT from 25% to 12% on repairs of clothing and bicycles, and made it deductible on the repair of home appliances.