Abstract
Businesses may take advantage of rapid technological developments to increase sales by designing products with a short lifespan and encouraging consumers to buy a replacement more quickly than they otherwise might have to, which is commonly known as planned obsolescence. While employing a holistic approach and exploring planned obsolescence from three different angles—the demand side, supply side and environmental side—the article argues that the current measures in the fields of unfair competition and consumer protection law, competition law and environmental law are quite insufficient to deal with planned obsolescence. Therefore, there is a need for an EU measure outlawing planned obsolescence in the context of the circular economy.
Highlights
A circular economy (CE) is the EU’s main strategy for replacing linear ‘take– make–use–waste’ models with more circular ones, where resources are used and kept for longer to reduce and avoid waste as much as possible
While employing a holistic approach and exploring planned obsolescence from three different angles—the demand side, supply side and environmental side—the article argues that the current measures in the fields of unfair competition and consumer protection law, competition law and environmental law are quite insufficient to deal with planned obsolescence
This article addresses planned obsolescence from a holistic approach, positioning it into three main areas, namely unfair competition and consumer protection, competition law, and environmental law, which traditionally are underpinned by economic considerations respectively from the demand side, the supply side and the environmental side concerning their impacts on the market
Summary
A circular economy (CE) is the EU’s main strategy for replacing linear ‘take– make–use–waste’ models with more circular ones, where resources are used and kept for longer to reduce and avoid waste as much as possible. In contrast to the previous literature,[11] this article employs a holistic approach and positions planned obsolescence in three main areas, namely unfair competition and consumer protection law, environmental law[12] and competition law,[13] which have been employed or could potentially be employed to deal with planned obsolescence. The EU action is justified as it relates directly to the internal market, especially as it is supported by the CE concept Building on this connotation, this article further argues that the EU-driven strategy towards a CE is superfluous where the durability of products is curtailed by unregulated planned obsolescence.
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