Differences in Perception of Extended Producer Responsibility and Product Stewardship among Stakeholders : An International Questionnaire Survey and Statistical Analysis

Different perceptions of the concept of extended producer responsibility and product stewardship (EPR/PS) have tended to lead to prolonged policy disputes and have likely affected the design of EPR/PS policies. We therefore surveyed stakeholders’ perceptions of the concept of EPR/PS, including its aims, application, and rationales, and analyzed 376 responses with regression analysis and cluster analysis. The results clearly demonstrated the diversity in stakeholders’ perceptions and identified/confirmed several patterns between stakeholders’ perceptions and attributes. Concerning aims, our analysis showed that stakeholders from middle-/low-income countries placed more importance on proper treatment and waste reduction in EPR/PS policy, while those from Europe, North America, Japan, and the rest of Asia had different perceptions on seven aims of EPR/PS, especially for increasing collection and shifting responsibility to producers, and paid varying attention to upstream and downstream improvement (e.g., better product design and recycling, respectively). Our analysis also confirmed that respondents perceiving lack of capability of local governments regarding waste management advocated EPR/PS more and respondents positive about information acquisition put more importance on physical responsibility. The largest contributing variables to the perception of EPR/PS were 14 specific EPR/PS mechanisms/issues, suggesting that discussion about specific mechanisms of EPR/PS policy is a key if common and better understandings of the EPR/PS concept are to develop. The dominant rationale of EPR/PS agreed upon by the respondents was producers’ capability, but the concept of beneficiary bears was also supported by 58% of respondents, especially by national governments and North Americans. Finally, implications of the results for EPR/PS policy development were discussed

A Lifecycle Data Management System Based on RFID Technology of EPC Class1 Gen2 v2

Part 1: Knowledge-Based SustainabilityInternational audienceTo cope with pollution, exhaustion of resources and new regulations extending producer responsibility, the original equipment manufacturers are working hard towards an efficient solution that solves those problems. We propose an RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) based information system which incorporates large user memory banks of EPCC1G2 v2 standard to follow up lifecycle information about the product. We use hierarchical data models to minimize storage requirement while storing all information about the whole product structure including subassembly and end components. Later we can extract the information to utilize maintenance histories and chemical structure of each component. We also consider applicability of our system in XML hierarchical data structure for the possibility of internet usage

Sustainable Value Generation Through Post-retail Initiatives : An Exploratory Study of Slow and Fast Fashion Businesses

The dialogue between slow and fast fashion has gained great prominence in recent years particularly in terms of sustainability. In the forward value chain, fast fashion companies are most often considered to be unsustainable whereas the slow fashion brands are comparatively more planet-friendly. However, the discussionon the trade-off between sustainability and “speed of fashion” (classified into slow and fast fashions) in the post-retail segment is still limited. A deeper understanding, however, would not only contribute towards conceptualizing the post-retail initiatives, but would also shed light on how these are differentially undertaken by various types of fashion businesses in terms of generating sustainable value. This study proposes sustainable value generation in terms of closing the material and responsibility loops. It further reveals that the trade-off in post-retail is not as rigid as itis in the forward value chain. However, fast fashion offers the lowest potential todisplace the purchase of new clothes to close the material loop whereas the redesign brands offer the highest; moreover fast fashion is less liable to take extended responsibilities compared to the slow fashion brands. It can be concluded that fast fashion is somewhat “stuck in the middle” in comparison to the slow and redesign brands in terms of generating value through closing the loop activities