Jessika Luth Richter

• PhD Industrial Environmental Economics
• Associate Senior Lecturer at Lund University

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes are adopted not only to promote collection and recycling of waste products but also to close material loops and incentivise ecodesign. These outcomes are also part of creating a more circular economy. Evaluations of best practices can inform how to further optimise systems towards more ambitious collec...

Rare earth element (REE) recycling remains low at 1%, despite significant uncertainties related to future supply and demand and EU 2020 energy efficiency objectives. We use a global production network framework of REE flows from mine to REE phosphors in energy-efficient lamps to illustrate the potential of closed-loop recycling for secondary supply...

New Zealand is often seen as a leader when it comes to environmental policies, but it needs to do much more to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

This article examines limits to per capita living space (i.e. living smaller and/or sharing living space) as a measure for achieving sufficiency in housing. It studies the acceptance, motivation and side-effects of voluntarily reducing living space in five European Union countries: Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Spain and Sweden. Insights are derived fr...

Repair practices are driven not only by consumers’ internal motivation, but also by external infrastructural, social including cultural, financial, and political factors. We explore these factors with the goal of understanding the public repair of electrical and electronic products (e‐products) from a systems perspective to help devise appropriate...

Given the outsized impact that digitalization has had on consumption over the last two decades, the lack of academic interest in sustainable consumption is noteworthy. In this book chapter, we set the scene for the fundamentally important discussion about how digitalization affects consumption. We ask whether digitalization is a positive or a negat...

Leaking water infrastructures, heritage tourism, investments in artworks, failing electronics: Durability lies at the heart of a wide range of seemingly unrelated phenomena. In today's economies, which rest on ever-larger stocks of infrastructures, buildings, machinery and household goods, durable things are both a hugely significant source of weal...

Initiatives to upscale repair activities are becoming increasingly common, with the latest being the EU commission's proposal to strengthen consumers' right to repair. However, these initiatives are not viewed comprehensively, particularly not for how they impact the product user's experience of the repair process, and what type of repair condition...

In both the US and EU, policymakers and government agencies are acknowledging the importance of having access to repair options, particularly for vulnerable product users who depend on their products. As such, repair can play an important role as a resource for resilience, but research is missing. We propose that repair can act as a resource for re...

The current enthusiasm for the circular economy (CE) offers a unique opportunity to advance the impact of research on sustainability transitions. Diverse interpretations of CE by scholars, however, produce partly opposing assessments of its potential benefits, which can hinder progress. Here, we synthesize policy-relevant lessons and research direc...

Product repair plays an important role in the realisation of a circular economy (CE) and sustainable consumption, yet little is known about what repair entails for individual product owners or users, particularly in a realised CE. This paper proposes a comprehensive approach by conceptualising repair as a multi-stage, cyclical process, shaped by pr...

A circular economy (CE) calls for the value of materials and products to be maintained and recovered through narrowing, closing, and slowing loops. However, there remain challenges in capturing value through reuse of components in refurbished and repaired products. In this paper, we provide an overview of the research and practice of harvesting spa...

Research into repair within the circular economy (CE) typically focuses on technical aspects of design, policy, and markets, and often assumes simplified conditions for the user/owner and the product system to explain the barriers to scaling repair activities. However, factors occurring at pre‐use stages of the product's life cycle can significantl...

Prolonging the lifetime of products through repair is a key strategy of a circular economy. But several barriers impede the repair of consumer products. How can repair policies at different levels address these barriers?

Electric vehicles could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deliver a sustainable transport system. But the full life cycle of electric vehicles needs to be considered in order to avoid creating resource issues while trying to achieve the necessary climate goals.

Sweden is actively seeking to scale up repair activities as part of its strategy to reduce waste, transition to a circular economy, and achieve zero net emissions by 2045. In the last couple of years, several new policies to promote consumer repairs have been adopted or proposed in Sweden. However, very little is known about the socio-cultural fact...

Extending the lifetime of products is seen as a key objective for realising the vision of a Circular Economy. One way to increase the lifespan of products is to enable more repair activities. However, consumers encounter a variety of barriers for repairs, prompting public authorities in Europe and the US to adopt or propose policies in support of c...

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes have proliferated across Europe and other parts of the world in recent years and have contributed to increasing material and energy recovery from waste streams. Currently, EPR schemes do not provide sufficient incentives for moving towards the higher levels of the waste hierarchy, e.g. by reducing the...

With the burgeoning transition towards electrified vehicle fleets, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have come into focus for different stakeholders due to high costs, supply risks, production-related resource and energy demands and environmental concerns. Circular business models (CBMs) and Circular Economy (CE) strategies to slow and close resource lo...

The current enthusiasm for circular economy (CE) offers a unique opportunity to advance the impact of research on sustainability transitions. Diverse interpretations of CE by scholars, however, produce partly opposing assessments of its potential benefits, which can hinder progress. Here, we synthesize policy-relevant lessons and research direction...

Achieving a more circular production and consumption pattern will require consumers to make proactive choices regarding practices such as repair and product life extension. However, galvanizing such choices and practices may not be left alone up to consumers because their behaviors are driven not only by internal factors (e.g., attitude and motivat...

Many strategies have been proposed to support the transition to a Circular Economy (CE). In most cases, circular design and product life-extension practices specify repair as an essential element. In both the EU and the U.S., policymakers are attempting to increase the amount of repairs made, through the introduction of recent EU Ecodesign regulati...

The number of policies that address the various life cycle environmental impacts of products are increasing, especially in Europe. With the rise of the Circular Economy (CE) concept, the traditional product policies have been supported by new ones that pursue new policy objectives such as increasing product lifetimes and encourage more repairs. In...

SOME PEOPLE work with the Circular Economy every day …. But many of us have lots to questions! A simple question that we often hear is WHAT is the Circular Economy? We also consider other questions to be important and address it throughout the Massive Open Online Course: Circular Economy: Sustainable Materials Management. You can access the course...

The issue of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) and potential interruptions to their supply and availability due to concerns such as shortages, trade restrictions or geopolitical considerations are topics that are relatively unknown to the general public. Education and the dissemination of this information amongst the general public has been promoted as...

Longer product lifetimes are promoted by the EU's Circular Economy Action Plan, but incentivising longer lifetimes could also result in trade-offs between different environmental impacts for some product categories. LED lamps are still experiencing improvements in efficacy and material design, which raises questions about whether longer lifetimes a...

Radical energy efficiency improvements are needed to keep global warming within 1.5 °C until the end of the century. Minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) are a widely applied policy instrument to improve the energy efficiency of appliances and reduce CO2 emissions, but they are criticized as redundant if an overarching carbon pricing scheme...

In the European Union (EU), mandatory durability ecodesign requirements have recently been set for some products, including lighting products; further development of durability standards is also expected in the future. Durability standards can bring environmental and consumer benefits, but the question remains about what optimal durability is. In t...

Energy efficiency regulations are one of the important policy packages employed for climate mitigation. Recent evaluations from the USA and the European Union (EU) indicate that the setting of minimum mandatory energy performance standards (MEPS) for different products—such as electric motors, TVs, and dishwashers—are among the best-performing clim...

Introduction: A large number of policy instruments have been developed to induce energy efficiency and mitigate climate change. Traditional policy evaluations have assessed the performance of individual policy instruments, applying criteria such as target effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, legitimacy and distributional effects. More recently there...

Ecodesign policy for energy-using products so far has tended to focus on the energy efficiency requirements, but there is increasing interest in durability requirements as well. This exploratory study analyses whether and when long lifetimes are preferable when considering the trade-offs between durability and other important parameters such as cos...

This article addresses a research gap on the challenges—specifically risk and value—connected to realizing the potential for closing loops for rare earth elements (REE). We develop an analytical framework from conceptual elements of the global value chain (GVC) framework and the relational theory of risk to examine several empirical REE industry ca...

In the context of the Circular Economy, there is a lot of discussion on how policies at European Union and member state levels could provide incentives for the design of more durable products. One potential policy approach is to mandate manufacturers to provide lifetime information to consumers at the time of purchase. This could be done through a...

This paper presents a general overview of WEEE and value considerations (both real and potential) as well as the specific results of a research project analysing the performance of EPR systems for lighting products, with particular focus on closing material loops. The research is based on a literature review, case studies, and interviews with key s...

Innovations in the lighting sector, such as LED-based light sources, have opened up unprecedented possibilities to both save energy and improve the quality of lighting. There is growing evidence of light's importance for human health, moods, work productivity and quality of life in general; but the uptake of new solutions is still rather slow in so...

The proliferation of massive open online courses is a recent phenomenon in higher education. At the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University in Sweden, emerging pedagogical approaches in e-learning have long been embraced, allowing for valuable experience with new educational technologies applied in educatio...

Find the compendium here - http://lup.lub.lu.se/record/4986134 The concept of a ”green economy” is rapidly gaining interest around the world. However, the idea is not new. It appeared in 1989 in the book “Blueprint for a Green Economy”. During the 1990s and most of the 2000s, the green economy was not a widely used term. But it gained a new lease...

The paper provides a comprehensive empirical assessment of American stimulus policies aimed at renewable energy (RE) technologies. We use an indicator-based methodology to assess progress with respect to energy, environmental and socio-economic issues resulting from RE stimulus programs linked to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and revi...

The New Zealand emissions trading scheme (ETS) was introduced by legislation in 2008. The legislated objectives as stated in section 3 of the Climate Change Response Act 2002 are to ‘support and encourage global efforts to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases by (i) assisting New Zealand to meet its international obligations under the [UNFCCC] C...

Emission trading schemes (ETS) have emerged as a popular climate policy measure and are increasingly advocated as policy instruments to support the transition to a green economy. Using complementary analytical methods, this research investigated the institutional developments and complexities of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS). It...

New Zealand is often seen as a leader when it comes to environmental policies, but it needs to do much more to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The New Zealand emissions trading scheme (NZ ETS) is one of the first national-level GHG trading schemes outside Europe. It is also unique in its design and comprehensive sectoral coverage, including forestry. This paper provides an ex-post-assessment of market behavior in the NZ ETS in its first phase (2008-2012). Findings are based on quantitativ...

The New Zealand emissions trading scheme (NZ ETS) is one of the first national-level GHG trading schemes outside Europe. It is also unique in its design and comprehensive sectoral coverage, including forestry. This paper provides an ex-post-assessment of market behavior in the NZ ETS in its first phase (2008–2012). Findings are based on quantitativ...