Hello everyone,I attached a few articles for your CSR Research Brief. Please chooseoneof the...

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Hello everyone,I attached a few articles for your CSR Research Brief. Please chooseoneof the articles for the upcoming brief assignment. Refer to the grading rubric when writing the brief, and remember this brief is intended to be amanagerial summary.In other words, you don't write for academics, you write for your boss. This means he/she will be able to understand the constructs very well even if they were not familiar with them before receiving your brief.Slower Consumption Reflections on Product Life Spans and the “Throwaway Society” FORUM Slower Consumption Reflections on Product Life Spans and the “Throwaway Society” Tim Cooper Summary Sustainable consumption is unlikely to be achieved as long as the quantity of household waste generated in industrial nations continues to rise. One factor underlying this trend is the life span of household goods. This article contributes to recent advances in life-cycle thinking by highlighting the significance of product life spans for sustainable consumption and exploring the current state of research. A theoretical model is developed to demonstrate how, by contributing to efficiency and sufficiency, longer product life spans may secure progress toward sustainable consumption. Empirical research undertaken in the United Kingdom on consumer attitudes and behavior relating to the life spans of household products is reviewed and factors that influence the market for longer- lasting products are discussed. A need is identified for further research on product life spans and some themes are proposed. Keywords eco-efficiency life-cycle thinking obsolescence product durability product life spans sustainable consumption Address correspondence to: Dr. Tim Cooper Centre for Sustainable Consumption Sheffield Hallam University Howard Street Sheffield S1 1WB, UK   © 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University Volume 9, Number 1–2 http://mitpress.mit.edu/jie Journal of Industrial Ecology 51 F O RU M Introduction Sustainable consumption has been defined by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD 2002a) as “the consump- tion of goods and services that meet basic needs and quality of life without jeopardizing the needs of future generations.” This may be interpreted in many different ways, but there is a general consensus that for industrialized countries, at least, it implies a reduction in the throughput of resources. This requires a shift from a linear economy to a circular economy so that inputs of virgin raw material and energy and outputs in the form of waste requiring disposal decline (Cooper 1994). This approach is increasingly rec- ognized in public policy and long established in countries such as Germany (through its Closed Substance Cycle and Waste Management Act) and Sweden (through the work of its Ecocycle Commission). In Britain, McLaren and colleagues (1998) calculated that a fair use of “environmental space” (the earth’s capacity to support human activities) requires that the nation cut its con- sumption of steel, aluminum, and energy by over 80% by 2050, implying reductions of at least 20% by 2010. For timber, the figures are 73% by 2050 and 65% by 2010—a dramatic short-term reduc- tion. Such analysis has prompted renewed inter- est in energy and material flows (e.g., Biffa 1997; DEFRA 2002) and has led to the emergence of resource productivity on the public policy agenda (Cabinet Office 2001a; Green Alliance 2002; OECD 2001; Sustainable Development Commis- sion 2003). The literature on sustainable development in- creasingly recognizes a need to address resource throughput, but only rarely is mention made of the potential role of longer product life spans in slowing it down. Increased longevity could be achieved by greater intrinsic product durability and by improved maintenance through careful use, repair, upgrading, and reuse (“product life extension”). Product durability and product life extension were key themes in an early contri- bution to the debate on sustainable production and consumption by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (Falkman 1996), and in promoting the “factor four” concept, von Weizsäcker and colleagues (1997, p. 70) argued that “durability is one of the most obvious strate- gies for reducing waste and increasing material productivity.” Likewise McLaren and colleagues (1998, 53) described durability and reuse as “crit- ical in increasing overall efficiency” in resource use. Despite such sentiments from industrialists and environmentalists, however, the twin themes of product durability and product life extension have attracted relatively little research interest to date, and whether the academic community regards them as central or peripheral to sustain- ability discourse remains unclear.1 This article considers the proposition that greater attention must be paid to product life spans for industrial nations to make adequate progress toward sustainable consumption. It presents a theoretical model to demonstrate how, by contributing to efficiency and sufficiency, longer product life spans may be needed to se- cure progress toward sustainable consumption. A discussion of product life spans in the context of life-cycle thinking is followed by a review of re- cent empirical research and factors that influence the market for longer-lasting products. A need for further research on product life spans is identified and some themes are proposed. Resources and the “Throwaway Society” Municipal waste in industrialized countries has been increasing at around the same rate as economic growth, around 40% over the past 30 years, and “the delinking of effluence from afflu- ence remains elusive” (OECD 2001). Despite evi- dent public concern about waste (DEFRA 2001), the popular concept of a “throwaway society” is rarely explored in adequate depth and, with a few exceptions (e.g., Redclift 1996; Strasser 1999; Thompson 1979), there is a dearth of academic research linking waste to the consumption of household goods. A reasonably substantial body of literature explores consumption in a socio- cultural context (e.g., Cross 1993; Featherstone 1991; Lury 1996), complementing the extensive marketing research on why and how individu- als consume. Some (more limited) research into disposal behavior investigates why individuals discard products (Antonides 1990; Bayus 1988; Box 1983; Boyd and McConocha 1996; Cooper 52 Journal of Industrial Ecology F O RU M and Mayers 2000; Hanson 1980; Harrell and McConocha 1992; Jacoby et al. 1977). Explanations for the growth and persistence of our prevailing throwaway culture, however, have been less adequately addressed. This per- haps reflects a failure in liberal democracies to associate waste with consumer choice. Un- til recently, public policy has appeared to equate increased consumption and human hap- piness (Donovan and Halpern 2002). Consumer sovereignty has been regarded as sacrosanct and consumer choice treated as a “right.” Advo- cacy of restrained consumption, by contrast, is often marginalized in public debate. Hansen and Schrader (1997, p. 444), though, have proposed a new model of sustainable consumption criti- cal of “the model of consumer sovereignty ac- cording to which individual consumer behav- ior is seen as ethically neutral.” They conclude (p. 455) that “the consumer should no longer tolerate and bring about what he objects to as a citizen.” In earlier environmental debate, arguments for using resources carefully were often motivated by concern about depleting finite resources (e.g., Conn 1977). A consensus is now appearing that although materials scarcity does not pose a seri- ous threat in the short or medium term, the envi- ronment has a limited ability to absorb material streams without being harmed and reserves of fos- sil fuels are limited (Frosch and Gallopoulos 1989; Westkämper et al. 2000). The more recent de- bate on resource productivity has been prompted by a desire to reconcile economic and environ- mental objectives (an efficiency objective) and a concern that excessive consumption in affluent nations is at the expense of people in less industri- alized nations and of future generations (a moral objective). One important determinant of resource pro- ductivity is the length of the period over which resources are used. When the British Govern- ment’s Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) produced a report on resource productivity, the process was as revealing as the final report. In its initial Scoping Note, the PIU highlighted five ways of increasing resource productivity, the first of which was “resource prolonging” by increasing durability, decreasing turnover rates (i.e., presum- ably, less frequent replacement), and redesigning products (or components) for longer use; another was the reuse of products or components (Cabinet Office 2001b). The published report, however, excluded any reference to resource prolonging or reuse (Cabinet Office 2001a). The implied chal- lenge to traditional approaches to economic pol- icy was evidently too profound for Treasury offi- cials to accept. The Treasury’s stance may be explained by the conventional economic wisdom that growth in GNP, which requires ever-rising consumer spending, should be its principal policy objective. By contrast, a trend toward longer-lasting prod- ucts would appear liable to reduce or even reverse growth (although in practice the outcome would depend on many complex factors, including em- ployment practices and people’s spending aspira- tions). Thus the PIU’s final report addressed the need for resource productivity, considered mea- surement issues, and proposed strategic tools (e.g., the role of market-based instruments, innova- tion, public procurement, and cultural change), but excluded any reference to durability or other more specific and detailed mechanisms. Slow Consumption Beyond the corridors of power in Britain, an alternative model of consumption is being devel- oped in which temporal factors are taken more fully into consideration. Reisch (2001) notes critically that “mainstream economics is deeply embedded in modernity’s vision of progress and growth” (p. 369) in which “time is money” and people consume ever faster: “timescales of con- sumption are steadily decreasing due to shorter product life spans and an increasing speed of prod- uct innovations which are in turn the outcome of accelerating R&D processes” (p. 371).2 Not- ing the “new models of wealth” being developed by Germany’s Wuppertal Institute, she suggests that human well-being derives in part from the attention people give to their possessions and their involvement with them, and notes that this attention and involvement requires time. Thus, she concluded, “the assumption of nonsaturation which is at the core of economic theory must be challenged” (p. 378). The PIU’s approach to resource productiv- ity focused on eco-efficiency, the potential for Cooper, Slower Consumption 53 F O RU M reducing environmental impacts and economic costs simultaneously through more efficient use of energy and materials. Such innovation, though, may not lead to sustainable development as long as consumption continues to increase. For example, the OECD (2002a) reported that in the Netherlands electricity consumption increased by 14% between 1974 and 1994 despite signif- icant efficiency improvements in many appli- ances. This suggests that technological improve- ments will not suffice and there is a need to slow the rate at which raw materials are transformed into products and eventually discarded, a process that has been described as “slow consumption” (Ax 2001). Two international initiatives have provided signs of a significant cultural shift in this direc- tion. Recent discourse on slow consumption has been initiated through Slow Food, a social move- ment of critics of the fast food culture, which originated in Italy in 1986 and now claims 80,000 members in over 100 countries. Slow Food locates its philosophical origins in the 17th-century writ- ings of Francesco Angelita, who considered slow- ness a virtue and, believing that all creatures bore messages from God, wrote a book about snails. Slow Food thus adopted a snail as its symbol, noting that the creature is “of slow motion, to educate us that being fast makes man inconsid- erate and foolish” (Slow Food 2002). The slow concept is now being applied as a prefix in other contexts. Slow Cities is a network of towns and cities formed in 1999 with

Pooja · Accepted Answer

1. Writer’s Name and topic of reviewed article
Writer Name: Tim Cooper
Topic: Sustainable Consumption and Product Life Span
2. Article Title: Slower Consumption: Reflections on Product Life Spans and “Throwaway Society”
3. Analysis Of: 
How to achieve sustainable consumption if the household generated waste continues to increase? 
4. Key Points: 
· Discussion on how to achieve sustainable consumption? 
· How to minimize household generated waste?
· How to raise the industrial nations?
· Necessity of analysing the life-cycle of every product
· Need of increasing the durability of all consumer products 
· Need to discontinue the throwaway culture 
· Insisting everyone to analyse the importance of economic, technological, and psychological influences
5. Overview: 
The research indicates that to attain sustainable consumption there is a need to increase the life of the products used in households. In this way, the industrialized nations will be able to rise and sustain. There should be minimum household wastage so that the nation could survive and achieve sustainable consumption state easily. Highlighting the significance of the life span of a product, this research states that a nation can easily achieve sustainable consumption state. To explain the same, a theoretical model has been developed. 
Many researchers have been done in the same context like Empirical research by the United Kingdom that has studied the attitude and behaviour of the consumer regarding the life span of the products they use. It has been observed that industrialized countries imply a decrease in the throughput of resources. The municipal waste is increasing day by day in the industrialized nations at the same rate as the economic growth. Also, the throwaway society thinks about throwing away the product that is no longer in use.

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