Beyond Planned Obsolescence: Product Lifespans and the Challenges to a Circular Economy

Shrinking product lifespans, whose side-effects include increased natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions, are negatively impacting the environment. The circular economy and bans on built-in obsolescence are widely embraced as solutions to today’s “throwaway society”. The serious limitations of both strategies, however, can be illustrated by analysing a marketing campaign of the Austrian mobile phone provider T-Mobile. A successful policy to encourage longer product lifespans requires measures beyond bans on built-in obsolescence together with a circular economy model accounting for both efficiency and sufficiency.